Post Serenity: Is the Fireflyverse even remotely pro-government anymore?*warning: spoilers*
POSTED BY: chrisisall
UPDATED: Thursday, November 24, 2005 06:58
VIEWED: 10014
PAGE 9 of 11
Whoa,
Citizen. That was a long post.
I'll try to answer it.
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Yes, I see exactly! The partially socialist states of Europe (Britain, France, Germany etc) are well known as the most evil states in existence in the world!
There's nothing socialist about Britain, France and Germany. These are capitalist democracies with the equivalents of democrats and republicans making up majorities of their parliments. So they have some social programs, like a public health. This doesn't make a country a socialist state.
A socialist state is one where the state, as an entity, is the basis of the economy, like Nazi Germany, The Soviet Union, Iraq, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and many others. Some aren't terrible. But because a country has socialists holding some party seats in parliment is very very far from making it a socialist state.
France is annoyingly self important. They have done some very questionable things, and delight in attack us any time we do something similar. It's what draws wrath. It's not evil.
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Yes, because as you've already asserted the only evil people in the world are those crazy leftists who want all freedom taken away.
This made me laugh. No, I don't think that's my position. I've said the Bush administration is evil many times so far. I don't like how the crazy lefties want to take all the freedom away, though. And some of them do. I have issues with that. I think I said that I thought Osama Bin Laden isn't an evil leftie. I think he's pretty right wing, except for his love of Nazis, which he does love them, he is underhandedly funding American neo-nazi movements, but he himself is probably pretty right wing. He's pro personal freedom and anti-big government. He's personally evil. He's his own unique kind of evil.
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f) Most closely resembling the rightwing ideology of Fascism.
WHAT????????!!!!!!!
This is the first I've heard of it. Fascism is right wing? Since when? I don't even know where this is coming from? Or to put it in buffy quotes "You're brain isn't even connected to your mouth, is it?"
Really I mean no offense. I think you're smarter than that. Use your head. I think also you've fallen into a trap of labelling everything you despise as right-wing. If someone did this, of course they would despise the right.
You have to credit at right wing only those things the right ascribes to. It's never been fascism. Fascism itself is closest linked to social militarism. Bush could be said to be a little fascist. I don't think it would be completely fair, but it's an argument one could make. It wouldn't apply to the whole of the right, and to say that it's a right wing ideology seem to me absurd.
Fascism is born of "might makes right" which has right in it, sure, but that's a top down approach, a big govt. approach. Fascist govts. have been generally left wing, but I will credit that I don't think of fascism as a left wing ideology, I think it's its own ideology outside the spectrum.
Here's how I see it:
Fascism is the oppostite of libertarianism. Since every has granted libertarianism as outside the left right, it's fair to say the same for fascism. I think you should take this offer, since if it has to fall in the spectrum, it's not going to end up on the right end.
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Your definitions of Right-wing and Left-wing are obviously incorrect, as I alluded to earlier. Let me clarify by taking your points as too what you see Right wing to actually be:
personal freedoms originally a left-wing ideal now adopted by some ideals which are sometimes considered to be right wing, such as Libertarians.
pro-religious freedom Actually strict right-wing ideologies are not sectarian, this is an original leftist ideal.
Did I make a definition of left wing. Left wing strives for universal equality, that is it's singular driving ideal. Just about everything the left, anyone from democrats to communists which I consider to be at diffrerent ends of the spectrum of left, everything any of them has done pretty much is
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Things to remember.
1) People tend to support political systems that benefit them or their social group in some way.
2) Conservative and progressive are relative terms. One US conservative I know calls the US war of independence a "conservative revolution" which I'm sure is an oxymoron. What he means is that modern conservatives see the period just after the revolution as being somehow sacred and the founders as conservative heroes. In the 1780's though they were definately seen as progressives, and a "conservative" then was a monarchist.
3)Progressive forces move things forward against people's inherent conservative instincts. People don't like change, if it aint broke dont fix it, EVERYONE is conservative to some degree or another because it's a damned good survival aid! If however the progressive elements produce something better --- like the US republic -- that then becomes accepted as the "norm" and entrenched. That then becomes the new conservative high water mark. You can see that elsewhere. In Russia a "conservative" is a hard line communist yearning for the return of the soviet state that benefited him. A progressive is a free marketeer and democrat.
Now getting back to firefly. First we are talking 500 years into our future. Now 500 years ago most of the world lived in feudal societies, capitalism, socialism, communism didn't even exist. Democracy was a failed Greek experiment that nobody anywhere practiced anymore.
Consequently we have no idea how politics works in the alliance or elsewhere. We have seen that Corporations like Blue Sun have considerable influence, perhaps the "Parliment" is actually a "board of directors" each representing the interests of a huge carbine ---- Capitalism gone crazy, "better world" may be what their PR companies put out to placate the masses.
Alternately, we have seen that some people have some kind of "status" higher than ordinary folk. There is some suggestion that the Tams are from that elite. Obviously companions have to have well to do clients and those clients seem to have raised their concubines to a level of being equals. Is this a monarchy? We have folks with noble sounding names appearing in "Shindig" is this a peculiarity of that world or is that world closer to the society of the core?
An American listening to the teacher's speech from Serenity might have a knee jerk reaction and say "socialist." However first impressions could be deceptive. If you had gone into the villiage that a grew up in in the mid 1920's you'd have found large affordable workers houses, library's, schools, free health care, a swiming baths, tennis courts, soccer and cricket fields, two social centers, public parks. Sounds like a socialist wonderland? No, it was a company town with everything provided by the company for it's workers. It was in short industrial feudalism, something very common in the late 1800's and the first decades of the 20th century but now almost unknown. Happy workers are productive workers, fit workers are productive workers, smart workers are productive workers. Social engineering for a better capitalist utopia....
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Two other thoughts.
1) We have no way of knowing what effects the migration from Earth-that-was had on the society of the 'Verse. In the Visual companion it suggests that the trip took generations. During that time there may have been a division between crew and passengers. Perhaps the elites and the professional classes in the core are decended from ships crews. Maybe "nobility" comes from what your family did during migration.
2) Imagine being on a ship for decades as basically cargo. People in command making all the decisions, survival meaning that you do as you are told by people that had authority over you and whose decisions could be life and death. It may be normal in the core worlds to do as you are told and not ask questions. That could be the conservative line. Folks out on the Rim forced to think and act for themselve or die are likely to have a completely different mindset. Years of migration told the folks in the core that survival was something communial and to follow orders. Decades on the Rim teaches folks to do what they have to to survive.
4) In our modern society people are commodity items, you can hire and fire at will so individuals are interchangeable. There were likely to be far fewer humans in the verse and so individuals may be more important. It could be that in the core at least initially a "nanny state" was almost a nescessity --- they simply couldnt afford to loose people.
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I think the message is:
Watch out for any organisation seeking to govern others that is in itself notably ungoverned. That and watch out for a government's motives and remember even if the motives are honourable, the greater number of persons involved, the more likely they are to fuck it all up …
Zoot’s succinct and pessimistic summary of the world in general …
***************************************
Okay, I'm lost, I'm angry, and I'm
armed.
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Originally posted by Dreamtrove:
There's nothing socialist about Britain, France and Germany. These are capitalist democracies with the equivalents of democrats and republicans making up majorities of their parliments. So they have some social programs, like a public health. This doesn't make a country a socialist state.
There’s plenty socialist in all those states. I know the British political system, I live in Britain. My original point was that some good has come from the socialist system, that was in support.
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This is the first I've heard of it. Fascism is right wing? Since when? I don't even know where this is coming from? Or to put it in buffy quotes "You're brain isn't even connected to your mouth, is it?"
Really I mean no offense. I think you're smarter than that. Use your head. I think also you've fallen into a trap of labelling everything you despise as right-wing. If someone did this, of course they would despise the right.
Can you please go over my posts again? I felt it necessary to give a polarised left-wing view to counter your polarised right-wing view. My point all along was the Nazism transcends the left/right spectrum, NOT that it was right wing. Nazism and Fascism ARE so closely related to be almost indistinguishable.
This is one of the reason’s I hold to my assertion that Nazism isn’t left nor right, and you seem to now be supporting me on this.
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Fascism is the oppostite of libertarianism. Since every has granted libertarianism as outside the left right, it's fair to say the same for fascism. I think you should take this offer, since if it has to fall in the spectrum, it's not going to end up on the right end.
I’d hold that it is in fact Totalitarianism that is the opposite of Libertarianism. Again a point I’ve been making all along.
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Socialism is a system which creates a power structure through which a far greater amount of evil can be committed should a flawed individual come to power.
But don't take my word for it, history has already proven this to be the case.
Sure, you could argue, socialism isn't evil it just opens the door to evil, but the same could be said of guns. No that's not a 2nd ammendment statement, 2nd ammendment is a mixed issue I have mixed feelings about. At the moment I support second ammendment rights, which is really complicated. But the argument socialism isn't evil is pretty much identical to "guns don't kill people, people kill people," which is a very flawed one. People who have no guns kill a lot fewer people.
The argument that Socialism is not evil because it is corrupted by people, rather than it is evil because it does corrupt people is actually quite valid. However, Capitalism, for instance, are just as open to corruption, but of a more insidious and harder to gauge nature.
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I don't get this. What are you trying to say? I mean, I'm not insuating anything, I just didn't understand the statement.
I’m saying that the Democrats aren’t all that left-wing, not any more. Neither is the Labour party (that’s Tony Blair’s party) in the UK for that matter.
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Good God. This is the most irresponsible thing you've said. Serously. I don't know what to say. You're dismissing the fact that Harry S. Truman ordered two nuclear strikes against a civilian population as inadmissable in a trial of whether the democratic party is agressively militaristic? On what grounds?
It’s out of the scope of this discussion. Irresponsible? Do me a favour. You thought I had a long post before, well you’d still be reading it right now if I’d gone into the use of Nuclear weapons at the end of the Second World War. Hence out of scope of THIS discussion. If you want to start a thread for the discussion of the destruction of Nagasaki and Hiroshima do so, but it’s out of scope here.
Further more you’ve got a big axe to grind with the Democratic Party and you do, Dreamtrove, but it was irresponsible, or at least of poor judgement, for your to br
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Fletch,
I basically agree. If I were in those times I'd side with the founding fathers, and that might make me a progressive.
In general I don't have a serious problem with progressives. I think progressives could be on either side. TR was considered a progressive and called his 'bull moose' party the 'progressive' party. There are progressives on the other side, some of whom I respect.
I don't think liberal is progressive. I think liberal is adhering to the values of an alternate society, which at times has existed, but in large part has existed for a long time in the minds of intellectuals as a utopian ideal.
I don't have serious problems with liberals. I just disagree with them. I don't have many problems with extant society, and if it could rewind to 1955 I'd be very happy, but I'd settle for 1985.
I realize this is backwards and reactionary, but I think we've started down a road of social change which is a wrong turn. I already know where it's heading because it was all dreamed up in advance and the dream was widely publicized.
I have a problem with socialists. I would like to see someone propose a solution which does not involve killing several million people, and one which will allow any group of people to set their own rules for their own society as long as they aren't hurting anyone else.
I'd like to see schools without marijuana as the main course of study, where smart kids could pull ahead of the curve, and where things that were known to be wrong didn't clutter up the day; healthcare that was based on common sense, where the options were wider than this brand or that, where the treatment was not based on kickbacks and intentional customer addiction to drugs; I'd like to see a miltary that actually defended America, and didn't go galavnting off to fight wars in other people's countries that those other countries' people don't really want. I want this for a society in which I live, and I don't want someone else telling me I can't have it like this because that's not how everyone else has it, and so I have to change. This makes me a conservative, and it's not going to change if someone wins an argument on some issue point.
What I really don't want is to spend a lot of time defending my position because someone has twisted my words around completely to say something I didn't say.
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Now getting back to firefly.
Thank You! Can we please do this!
Okay. I disagree we won't know what it's like. Europe was feudal in the middle ages, and the chinese system was similar, but I disagree that this was most of the world. I also think by 1505 (500 years ago) it was mostly monarchies. I don't think that even when contained feudal relationships that it was a fair comparison. That's like saying that because the roman empire has a senate that meant it was a republic. It just didn't come out that way in practice.
Most of the systems alive today have been debated for many centuries. There were many proponents of democracy and other various forms of govts. in the rennaissance. There was no socialism, but I'll bet if you digged through history you would find someone who thought they could legislate human nature in a similar way.
If it is capitalism gone crazy, it's still socialist. I call the Bush backers socialists and rightly so. Just because they initiate their changes through large monopolistic corporations with strong govt. ties instead of large govt. beaurocracies doesn't really make it different. It's the same thing, only without the checks and balances. But that's why I like to neo-socialist, because it's not idential to old world 20th century socialism, but the idea is the same, even if the means may be slightly different.
I think the alliance is neo-socialist. I think it's intentionally neosocialist as an attack on Bush. Joss doesn't live 500 years in the future and neither does his audience. He wants something they can relate to. Star Trek was often called a socialist utopia, which I think was also accurate. It's important to bear in mind that the totalitarian st
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Fletch, I think the colonies aren't the first experiment. I think they probably colonized and terraformed the solar system the same way, and learned some very tough lessons the hard way.
I remember when my older brother was growing up, he went out to wild parties, stole stuff did drugs, etc. When I was growing up my mom very carefully checked out all my friends, made sure she knew where I was, etc. Life was of course, less fun, but on the other hand, in retrospect I see why she did it.
This is a similar situation. We know what the colonization was like. It's a parallel for the west and America, so early one, the colonial Mars was like the east coast. England watched as it grew, organized, rebelled and eventually disputed the agenda of its creator.
So what I think is, this is what it would be like if England has a second chance. If the Mississippi had been the size of the pacific. The colonies of America rebel, and during their isolationist phase, England goes on and colonizes the east coast of Iowa.
Now, having learned from their mistakes, they cleverly set up a predetermined social order.
But something goes wrong. West America is bigger than old America, and they can't control it all. The west coast of Texas and the Idaho north shore are difficult to control from Iowa, and even the island of Lousiana is threatening to break away.
The new stellar system as it is told to us, is bigger than our own. So, the grand plan falls short, and there are fringes that can't be maintained. So they improvise. There are unification wars, there's Miranda.
Now things are a mess, California is taken over by insane cannibals and Arizona is threatening to make sneak terrorist attacks on Nebraska.
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Well first up Rome WAS a Republic -- that was why it had a Senate -- but that Republic failed and became a dictatorship. That great quote of Franklins when asked what kind of government they had chosen for the US Constitution "A Republic madam -- if you can keep it," reflects the fact that every other republic in history had become a dictatorship. The division of powers in the US Constitution is a safeguard against that happening to the US. Back in 1787 nobody knew if it would work. It is in fact the greatest social experiment of it's time. You said that progressives get their minds fixed on a Utopia they never acheive? You live in one such Utopia, it may fall sort on occasion, but compared to the world in the late 1600's this is the promised land.
Feudalism is a monarchy, in fact monarchy's in some form have existed 1000's of years. What Feudalism does is create a rigid society of classes, benefits and obligations with a King at the top. 99% of people labour on land they do not own paying rent to their land owners for the right to be allowed to continue living there.
I cant help thinking that somehow you've come to link socialism to totalitarianism so completely that you make the mistake of assuming that the two are interchangeable. This is not so. In any business there are two inputs, capital ---which means money, raw materials and any machinery--- and labour -- the effort of the workers that converts raw material to finished product. Marx argued that since there would be no product without workers labour then that labour was the superior partner in this relationship and that capital was secondary. This was not a new idea, Lincoln said much the same 50 years before. However Marx went a little further and said that if those workers owned the means of production --- ie the industries they worked in--- then the profits could be distributed equally to them. In effect he was advocating the workers control of industry. This is socialism, if the workers own the factories they work in then it's socialism if they do not it isnt. That is an absolute test.
So let's look at Nazism. First Hitler didn't nationalise very much at all. The state seized assets of Jews but in most cases it sold them to Germans and didnt keep them for the state. In fact Hitler was supported by Germany's biggest industrialists and as a result he gave them work. So was the means of production in the hands of workers under Nazism --- no so it couldnt be socialist. That's what socialism means, who owns the factories.
It was however totalitarian and if you see the words as interchangable then I can see your point.
One last thing don't pay too much attention to the "socialist" in the Nazi name. There is little truth in advertising. The party was originally a militarist party operating in Bavaria -- a little like some of these right wing militia groups in some US western states. At that time order was breaking down in germany and the socialists and communists were fighting for political control. If you were communist you put the word "peoples" or "communist" in your party name if you were anticommunist you put the word "national" or "socialist" in your party name. The Nazis did both. Remember that in the cold war we have the German Democratic Republic --- the only true thing in that name was that it was in Germany since it was neither democratic or a republic (in fact it was a communist regime) there is no truth in advertising.
You accuse the President of being a "socialist" and that he uses his cronies in big business to force his way. Are those businesses owned and operated by their workers --- no --- in which case it cant be socialist. Again you may accuse him of being a totalitarian but that does not automatically mean socialist.
As for your dreams of 1955, you are out of luck. Like most conservatives you miss the point entirely. The world changes to reflect economic forces, society changes in reflection of that economic reality.
You look at 1955 and see a social idea - dad is the bread winner comming home to housewife mom who makes
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Okay, I said I really don't want to waste time arguing what I already know, since I am under no obligation to educate people, and I want to waste time. I'll try to answer this.
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Well first up Rome WAS a Republic
Don't you think I know all this?
I expected this debate to happen at a higher level. This is the information age people. Everyone has access to infinite information. Even if you haven't been to 20 years of college, you still should be able to keep pace in a professionally informed discussion and assume that everyone else can too.
Assume I know all the facts and then some. A nine year old with access to wikipedia knows all the facts. Debates should be based on interpretation of those facts that we all already know.
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You said that progressives get their minds fixed on a Utopia they never acheive?
I don't hate the left. Yet. Please stop trying to make me. You know darn well that's not what I said just as Citizen knows darn well because My text is right there at the bottom of your screen as you're typing. So I can't help but feel that altering my words is some twisted rhetorical technique which is based on an idea that you feel you get more mileage from opposing me than agreeing with me.
1. I said Socialist are bent on a eutopia
2. I will not let you use the word progressive as a substitute for socialist, that's simply not honest.
3. I never said they never succeed. The Soviets built a perfect socialist state. I admire it in it's hideousness. I wouldn't want to live there, but I truly do admire the perfection of the creation. Like a beautifully crafted sword you wouldn't want to be at the pointy end of.
4. I'm definitely not conceding that this was a nation crafted by lefties. That's just patently false. You can argue against the T-shirt and bumper stickers that show the founding fathers with the words "right wing extremists," but you can't invert it can get away with it under the same logic and have me agree with you.
5. Clearly right stands for a set of beliefs regarding certain freedoms, and we put that above quality.
6. Clearly the right is not monarchist.
7. The terms left and right refer to whoever is in the political arena at any given time.
8. We are talking about the American left and the American right here. What was done by french people over a 30 year period is not particularly relevant to this debate. The American left and right really didn't exist prior to the revolution, because there was no political body for them to be divided in. In fact, they didn't divide until the 1820s.
9. The American Left and American Right split because of a debate between Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams. Eventually that debate split us into democrats and republicans. You can pick whatever side of that you want.
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Feudalism is a monarchy,
This just isn't so. Feudalism existed long before Monarchy in Europe, it was co-opted by the monarchs. Feudalism is a Guanji (sp?) would have been a more accurate statement, though the two are not identical. Feudalism is a business relationship.
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I cant help thinking that somehow you've come to link socialism to totalitarianism so completely that you make the mistake of assuming that the two are interchangeable.
Your twisting my position again.
I called the Bush admin. neosocialist, and clearly it's not totalitarian. It's part of a democratic process. It's manipulative, sure.
But this is really dodging the issue.
Everything is what it is in practice. Communism becomes what soviets do, and not the ideal of what marx laid out, because the soviets did it.
Stop and think for a second.
If we accepted your premise that socialism is marx, than we'd have to accept that Naziism was really an ideal govt. laid out by social darwinists and the like, and not a bloody murderer. This would be what the neonazis want us to believe, and if we believed it, we might put them in power and let them create our new state.
But who here truly believes that if we gave the
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First Time Warner is a business, not some liberal conspiracy. If it could make as much money selling bibles it would.
Free trade benefits US business and the folks that run it, absolutely, that is a fact check the record profits. It doesn't benefit America as a SOCIETY which is the point that I am making about 1955 world. Your problem is that the world we live in is driven by economic rather than societal forces. Time Warner sells Rap because kids buy it, kids buy it because they have disposable income given to them by parents that I would argue are bribing their kids rather than parenting. Why do they do that? Because in 2005 world it often takes 2 people working to pay the bills and finance the accellerated pressures to buy and consume. People would rather keep mom at work and pay off the kids than take the financial hit of mom (or dad) staying home.
Like I said everyone is conservative, I would rather live "back then" (though if I could cherry pick I would prefer 1960 after the Kennedy tax cuts but before Vietnam.) The problem is that this is the world we have and things have gone forward too far to go back. Try to restore 1955 and America becomes a theme park not an economic superpower.
No group of liberals got together and made this happen --you'd have to be warped to assume that the current US situation is utopian-- this is driven by economic forces that exist at this moment. 1955 world was created by excess capacity in the US economy caused by war production being redirected to producing goods, by 5 years of demand for goods that went unsatisfied because of the needs of war production and by 1000's of GI's returning home to start families. It is a moment in history -- a relatively good moment for the US there were good and bad moments before and after. The point is that the future happens no matter how comfortable you may be with the present and how wonderfull the past may look in hindsight.
You will never get 1955 world back, the best you can do is try and stear 2015 in the right direction.
And finally your definition of Feudalism is wrong. Your definition comes about because America never had a landed nobility therefore you assumed that Industrial Feudalism is the norm.
From the Oxford English Dictionary
feudalism
• noun the dominant social system in medieval Europe, in which the nobility held lands from the Crown in exchange for military service, and vassals were tenants of and protected by the nobles.
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