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 10 of 11
Okay, fletch
I don't know what you've done but you took things that you said and turned them around and put them in my mouth. I'm not intersted in any discussion that happens on this level at all, under any circumstances.
You took my statement of where I was coming from and painted it as my life philosophy and political point of view.
Timne Warner was created in the Tomb, the Skull and Bones headquarters. Treating it as independent would be absurd and dishonest.
I'm not wrong about feudalism. It's the relationship whereby a vassal agrees to pay a percentage of the yield in exchange for a lease from the owner. Since we were talking about traditional european feudalism, this has to be the interpretted meaning, since this is the origin of the system. I have a degree in the origins of medieval society, so I'm not just winging it. I know I'm right and I don't care if you know.
Unlike the pile on dreamtrove session, I'm not looking to say you are saying anything that you're not, so please drop it. I feel obligated to defend myself because people are saying I'm saying what I'm clearly not, since the text is right there. Please stop.
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I have a question BTW. If Time Warner is a some liberal conspiracy then why would it still exist after 10 years of a Republican congress? Why would Michael Powell (that well known leftist) be adjusting FCC ownership rules in their favor? Could it be perhaps that it's coupled to campaign contributions and the power of the media?
What I think is this. Big media shoves product --any product that sells. Old product doesnt sell as good as new product, the more sex/drugs/R&R included the better. So their business model will always lead to pushing the envelope and that will always place them outside of a conservative's comfort zone. They dont push a "liberal" message --- most liberals are for gun control and womens rights so I doubt they approve of "drink my 20/screw my ho/ pop a cap in that MF ass" kinda messages. I think you live in a world where anything you dont like is "liberal" and any bad government is "socialist." It would challenge that world view to imagine that there are other forces at work, that liberals dont want drugs in school, violence on TV and many of the other things you disapprove of. Like I said everyone is conservative, even liberals 
What is happening is easy to see in my opinion. Americans today are encouraged to consume --- remember Bush after 9/11 telling folks to go shop? Personally I'd have told folks that I was looking to call up the men we needed to finish the B*ds off but I'm a lefty so I guess that's me.
Americans are in debt because banks make it easy to spend more than you earn, they use that money to buy goods pushed at them via American companies but made in China. The company and its share owners dont mind because Chinese slave labor means bigger profits for them, they dont care about all the money going to China or all those Americans that can't find a good paying job. As long as they get their "nut" they're happy and they will pay off as many politicians as they need to to keep the good times rolling.
Remember 1955 world? Back then when you had kids you sacrificed for them, my folks did without so that we got new clothes, we never bought a thing that we didnt have the cash money to afford, we never borrowed, if we could make it rather than buy it we would. But then my parents were adults, they understood that they had responsabilities as citizens and as parents. Modern parents seem to have forgotten that, or perhaps have been encouraged to forget. Back in the 1950's industry discovered the "youth culture" kids that had disposable incomes but very little impulse control, kids easily influenced by fashion, kids that were gullable and easy to manipulate. I would argue that in the past 50 years that principle has been extended to every part of society. You don't need that 60 inch plasma TV -- my parents would never have dreamed of spending $3000 on a TV set even if they had the money--- but people do because they are kept as children later and later into life. Children are easy to manipulate but children are also terrible at raising children which is why the current generation is worse than the last.
No liberal did this. This is not a social utopia this is a "perfect world" for media combines, and big business who dont have a liberal bone in their bodies but will sell it to you if it makes them a buck.
The insiduous thing about Miranda is that nobody there chose to be drugged or were told what was happening. The insiduous thing about today is that the same kinds of control is being done and nobody notices --- well you do but you think it's a left wing socialist plot because you cant imagine that good capitalists would exploit the populous for profit.
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Fletch,
I don't know (or care) what you're on about.
Time Warner isn't a liberal conspiracy. It's just a conspiracy. The create content, and then they sell it with sex. For instance, just about all of the music videos aired on the video channels which are all owned by Viacom, are for Viacom signed artists. This is not free market enterprise. This is a conspiracy. It's a conspiracy to control content and make money through monopoly, rather than open free market competition.
I said re: socialism, which we all know what it is, is the left's bugbear partner which they should lose at the first available opportunity.
Right now the socialist in PNAC are the right's bugbear partner and I'm trying to help us lose them at the first possible opportunity.
Somehow whenever whoever first posted "The Alliance is a Socialist State" which wasn't me, all I was doing was wholeheartedly backing up that accurate statement, at some point we clearly trigger the social tripwire that awakened the socialist attack dogs.
Since I say "Socialism is evil" which it is, I am so not up for debating that, socialist governments have killed over a hundred million people collectively, there's no need to argue that; and then other people respond with you said "the left is evil" I cannot escape the conclusion that the attackers are socialists, and not lefties.
I never said "the left is a socialist" I said in response to these pro-socialist attacks "I hope the left has more to offer than socialism."
I think of the left as Democrats, Greens, and Ralph Nader. None of those I think are particularly socialist. I think Mr. Nader is closest in that he seems abnormally opposed to buisness and pro-government, but that only makes him federalist. He's never said to the best of my knowledge "let's nationalize the industry, let's change society, let's alter human behavior" his message has been things like "make the punishment fit the crime, rein in out of control greed, help people stand up for their rights." While I consider Mr. Nader part of the American far-left, I don't consider him a socialist. Since I consider Mr. Wolfowitz a Socialist, and he is clearly not part of the American far-left, I think it's clear that the left/socialist relationship is a loose one at best.
The problem is when the socialists latch on to the left like parasites. As I said, currently a group of them are latched on the right as parasites. If you're a socialist, be you nazi or commie or some other derivation, please do us both a favor and don't talk to me.
If you're part of the American left, who for some reason has a soft spot for socialism, get over it. Cut these guys loose, and don't deal with them.
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Chinese slave labor
This is an offensive comment. I have problems with communist china. I have problems with castro and chavez, and all the other socialist states around. But the Chinese aren't this bad, this simply isn't fair. China is, to the extent that it is, a fair free market competitor.
I welcome Chinese competition. Since my belief is the way to defeat socialism is through free reform, and a free market is the beginning of that reform, I have to wholeheartedly support commerce with China, and there is really nothing wrong with it. Chinese workers are typically skilled and earn decent wages.
I don't think that this is the problem. I think the problem is two fold:
1. The labor regulars in the US are incredibly unfriendly to anyone who hires americans. According to GM, for every $7/hr of take home pay they give to a worker in alabama, they pay $14 in taxes. Personal income tax in that person name, state tax, mandated benefit packages and corporate tax. By contrast, for the $10/hr they pay to a Korean worker in take home pay, they pay $1 in taxes. This is clearly a structural problem, since they are paying the Korean almost half again what their paying the American in terms of take home pay. The CEO of GM said, when confronted with why the Korean should get more money in take home pay, their response was "He's worth more."
T
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socialism
• noun a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.
totalitarian
/totalitairin/
• adjective (of government) centralized, dictatorial, and requiring complete subservience to the state.
These are NOT the same thing. It is a nonesense to say that any business owned by a small number of shareholders is "Socialist" it's like calling "solitare" a team sport. It simply isn't accurate. You point out that the USSR and the Nazi's have "Socialist" in the title BUT the thing that marks them out is that they were totalitarian. Tony Blair leads a socialist party (well kinda) half the political parties in Europe are socialist and most European governments have socialists as part of their makeup. When these people loose elections, they leave power because there is nothing in being a socialist that stops you being a democrat.
Citizen has tried to explain it and so have I. I'm not going to bother doing it any more. I absolutely agree that there are media monopolies. I completely understand your need for 1955 world, I even believe that at heart we ahve much the same values. My problem is that by saying "socialist" without understanding what the rest of the world knows it to mean you are completely ignoring the folks that are behind this --- clue here they live on Wall St and not the Kremlin. Left to their own devices companies will, form illegal monopolies and cartels, will manipulate their customers and try to buy influence. They will in so doing have the same effects on society that a meddling totalitarianist regeme would have via state sponsored propoganda. Absolutely on the same page as you there. No doubt.
But it isn't "socialism" to call the political and industrial elite of the US with all their privillages and benefits "socialist" is just inaccurate. A new aristocracy maybe --- since we see that succession comes in families left and right --- a new imperial elite definately. Socialist.... no.
Read the definition.
Oh and I'm not of the American left --- there is no such thing as the American left --- I am if anything of the European Thatcherite left (at least seen from the US)
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I never said they were. You did.
In practice, in a democracy, the collective community is the government.
But you definition is an abstract intellectualism with a real world value of zero.
Socialist govts. have come to power many times, and they have found ways to implement this abstract idea in a practical manner. Those ways I discussed, enumerated and commented that they were different from one another.
The end summation is that the post war interpretion of the problem with Nazis was "nationalism is evil" was incorrect. Nationalism is everywhere, and it only slaughtered millions when it was crossed with socialism. In my estimation, the correct interpretation we should have made was "socialism is evil." This is because Stalin did many or the same sorts of things as the Nazis, and so have many many socialist regimes since then, such as the VC, North Korea, Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic.
Mine is an extremely defensible position from the standpoint of real world facts. It needs no argument. I was not ranting because I wanted to convince you of it, as I've said many times, I don't care whether you understand or not. I was ranting to try to deflect your constant personal attack of character assassination.
I never said that these neo-socialists as I call them, ie. PNAC and company, live in the kremlin. They are by their own admission trotsky-socialists, and they are opposed to leninist or maoist socialists. Some may be on wall street, but more often they are in Washington DC.
As for the rest of the world, I think my examples included the rest of the world. Socialism in the US is pretty close to unknown, fortunately.
If you mean you're from the UK, Thatcher is neither socialist nor left. Even from an American perspective Thatcher is considered I right winger, and I have no problem with her. I have no problem with Michael Howard. I don't have a problem with Charles Kennedy or George Galloway as I said. I have a problem with Tony Blair. I spend a fair amount of time in the UK for an American, and I'm pretty familiar with what goes on there.
My reference to the Bush administration's supporters as socialists does not come from left field. It's what they have claimed to be for decades. They have long histories in the socialist intellectual community. You can look all of this up in wikipedia, it's all there in excruciating detail which you can then cross reference and check with any source you want. You'll find that yes, these people were all prominant socialists, and they have not changed their agenda one bit. They've changed some of their methods of operation. But the objective is the same.
I can't accept a defense of socialism. It's like a defense of Naziism. Take any one of a number of people in a long line of socialists and there is No defense for it. There's no defense for Slobodan Milosevic, or Saddam Hussein. Several of the world's greatest disasters of leaders todays are also socialists. Kim Jong Il, Robert Mugabe and Thabo Mbeki just to name a few. We'll never move forward until we can recognize this fundamental fact that this is a bad idea. Socialism is unworkable. The basic tenet you set forth for the basis of socialism, even if it was workable in practice, which it isn't, is flawed. The people who did not create something have no right to it's ownership. If they had such a right it is a foregone conclusion that they would perpetually scrap it for personal gain, or at the very least, manage it in a suboptimal fashion.
It's not the first idea to ever have been an unqualified disaster. It is certainly without a doubt the greatest such disaster. We need to move on, as a species, and look for other solutions that don't consistantly lead to genocide.
I suspect time will soon prove to us another unworkable problem. Many of Bush's supporters and also Clinton's have had stock in companies and this has adversely affected policy decisions. Public sector policy makers should probably be banned from holding stock in private sector companies.
We just live and learn.
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You know that Galoway is definately a socialist right?
The point that I am making is that Maggie is still left of the US mainstream. She liked free trade, she cut red tape, she reduced public ownership and liberalised labour markets, but she maintained public services, public health care et al and she definately did "meddle" with people.
You can cherry pick her if you like. I have known Americans that argue that Kennedy was right wing (tough on communism, tax cutter, strong on defence, Reagan liked him) and that Nixon was left wing. I find that bizarre. Milosovich was a Nationalist not a socialist, Serbs never nationalised anything they used "ethnic clensing" against people that were not of their racial group. That's the problem with Nationalists. Saddam gassed Kurds and Shites, not Sunni's.
As for economic socialism being unworkable -- you are quite right, political socialism probably is too for much the same reasons you state. I would go as far as to say that no state no matter what it chose to call itself has ever been a "socialist" state because that "ideal" is completely unworkable in practice. Your use of the word the way you do just annoys me. Imagine if Jeffery Dahmer called himself a "liberatian" and as a result people used libertarian in place of canibal. I don't care what "conclusions" you have come to, the word has an accepted meaning to everyone else but you, language only works if we agree on meanings. Several of us gave you definitions, if you cant use the language in the way the rest of us do then please don't use it at all.
I'm saying no more.
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Yes, I that's why I included him. I've heard Galloway called a socialist, anyway, and he's in bed with a lot of socialists. I've also heard Nader called this for the same reason for that matter. They may call themselves that, I don't know.
But that was my point. Socialism in action is really the socialist state. My point is I don't have problems with far left politicians. I have problems with Socialist States and their leaders. A Socialist State was what was at issue, because this started out by someone saying that the Alliance was a Socialist State.
Sure his far left viewpoints are far left, and bound to clash with my own. My point is, I have no gripe with this man. He's the sort of person I'd want on the opposite side of the aisle if I were in govt.
Plus whether or not he should be considered a socialist leaning labor party member, or ex-labor party member, he has a good record of opposition to socialist statists like Saddam Hussein, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. From a Republican perspective it's hard for me to have serious problems with anyone who attacks Clinton as viciously and deservedly as Galloway did. The only other person I can think who did so was Mr. Nader.
Socialist leaning politicians don't scare me, was my point. Socialism in action does.
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That's the problem with Nationalists.
Near as I can figure, this is an utter fiction. It seems to be the problem with socialists, since every such person was a socialist, and the only one who was a nationalist was also a socialist, and there were many other nationalists.
Milosevic did de facto nationalize the press, and most everything else was already pretty much state owned.
But let's set the record on Slobodan Milosevic, a socialist.
First he was the leader of a Socialist Party, called, coincidentally, the "Socialist Party."
Second, he was the leader of a socialist state called, coincidentally the "Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia."
Nowhere is it written that Slobodan Milosevic is a nationalist, and he ranted about the evils of Nationalism incessantly.
Logically, Nationalists are pro-self determination of their own people. Both Israelis and Palestinians for example, are nationalist to some degree. All of the break away states in Yugoslavia were nationalist entities. Croatia was openly so.
Milosevic in contrast wanted to maintain his socialist union. His ultimate goal was to merge several people in one nation, which is not very nationalistic of him.
And yes, he carried out or attempted to carry out an ethnic cleansing of mulsims, because their presence was a detriment to his socialist state.
Just as a curious side note, I met someone once who knew him, personally, Slobodan. He said that it was impossible to hate someone so thoroughly as he had come to had Milosevic.
Another note about Saddam Hussein. He attack Kurds because they were state separatists who wanted a national kurdish identity to establish a Kurdistan, a nation of Kurds. He attack Shiia because they were specifically trying to overthrow his govt. because they were in league with Iran, or because they WERE Iran, but he didn't attack Shiia as a whole, he only attacked particular Shiia milititant groups. If Sunnis had attempted to overthrow him, he would have squashed them. He did after all fight a war with the predominantly Sunni nation of Kuwait, in which he was very rough on Sunnis. Hussein himself wanted a mixed nation of all three ethnicities.
Everyone who has used the word to date, in any position of power, has more or less been in this context. I'm not picking a random person.
Here's one. Charles Manson called himself a socialist. I will grant that he wasn't one. A socialist must organize people into at least a presumed mutual benefit society, preferably of larger than six people, in order to be a socialist IMHO.
But nothing is perfect. You can't say that because America is not a perfect democracy that nothing which happens in America reflects back on the principles of Democracy, or their viability.
This is simply
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I'm still worried about your use of labels. People can call themselves whatever they like. It happens that they tend to call themselves things that make them sound like good guys, nobody is going to call themselves "united Republic of baby murderers and rapists" for example. A friend of mine once pointed out that if a nation had the word "democratic" in its name it was almost always a dictatorship. That doesn't mean that I automatically assume all democratic nations are dictatorships.
Prior to 1787 every proceeding Republic had failed and become a dictatorship, every attempt at democracy had failed. If the American founders played safe you would probably live in a constitutional monarchy since that was at least known to be a working model. Instead they worked out a system to limit the effects of "bad men" that is why you live in a representative constitutional republic and not a democracy. Bush can't "deblack" something because the institutions won't let him. Does that mean no American President can be evil or want to do evil things? No, but it limits his scope. If your argument is that socialist systems are more prone to exploitation by "evil men" we will never know because nobody has ever built one. If your argument is that without safeguards ANY political system can be coopted for evil then we are in agreement. When Jefferson said that the price of freedom was eternal vigilance he wasn't talking about some socialist because that idea didn't exist back then he was talking about the risk that any political system can nose dive into tyrany.
Jim Jones had a psudo Christian cult that killed hundreds. Now because he called himself Christian, because he called his cult a Christian church, does that mean that all Christians are evil or does it mean that evil doers want to hide behind otherwise noble ideas?
Let me run something by you and hopefully make it my final words. The reason your use of language in this area pisses me off is this. Nobody is going to label their group "the really evil people" they will always try to label themselves after the noblist ideals possible, they will call themselves Christian and never do one Christian thing for example.
Socialism is an appealing *idea* because it holds out the promise of a *fair society.* Of course it can never work because life is never fair, just as nobody can have perfect liberty without encroching on the liberty of someone else. We accept limitations on our personal liberty --- my right to swing my arms stops at the tip of your nose --- and we accept that the world is unfair while trying to make it as fair as it practical.
However the promise of Socialism is a fair society, the idea that the poor downtrodden masses will *somehow* be lifted up. Guess what? If you are part of the downtrodden masses that idea sounds really appealing. So we have a failed or failing state -- which is what all the countries you have cited were --- and a hard man steps up and says "follow me." Now if he stands on his soap box and says "I'm an evil bastard, I'm going to arrest/torture/kill vast numbers of you, slaughter others on a whim, kill still more because I dislike their ethnic background" how many people will follow him? Not many I will think. If he stands up and says "brothers and sisters, I am a socialist I *believe* we can build a better society, a fairer society, for all our people..." how many will follow him then?
The problem I see is that this is a con game and all con artists move on when a scheme gets old. So if as you suggest the idea of Socialism has now been tarnished the same evil doers will move on to something else and just call themselves something different. If your "vigilance" is directed only at things claiming to be socialist then they can walk right by you disguised as something else.
Bin Laden isn't a socialist, he has no intention of building a fairer society and has no interest in economic ownership or control, he wants a theocracy, a caliphate that covers the whole world (preferably with him in charge.) It's the same old evil scheme, take
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post deletd
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Can't believe you've made me write five pages defending me :)
Or did I miss the irony? Is it that you hate socialism, and yet felt I misrepresented it and so felt compelled to defend it?
Well, no matter. It was in it's way an interesting waste of time. If it makes you happier I'll call them Socialist Statists. That's what the CIA says.
But I do think the underlying notion, the wikipedia one-liner "focusing on general welfare rather than individualism, on co-operation rather than competition" defines the ideology adequately, and that it's an ideology on a collision course with disaster.
Nationalist, btw, imho, are also often a problem. Someone posted OBL is a socialist. I don't hold with that, I think OBL is a nationalist. He's still a problem. The IRA are nationalists, and a problem. But Nationalism to me is a small problenm socialism is a big problem, hence, national socialism is a huge problem. It's a multiplying factor, not an averaging one.
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A friend of mine once pointed out that if a nation had the word "democratic" in its name it was almost always a dictatorship.
I call this the "everyone is always lying" rule. The Quiet Easy-Start lawnmower is sure to take forever and make a racket. Given that I take your point re: the union of soviet socialist republics. I just don't agree. I think that most of them are being pretty honest about it. They're not F*^&ups, they actually do believe.
I basically agree, except that there was Andrew Jackson, who did set a course to de-indian America. I would say that after reconstruction, much maligned though it is, the systems of checks and balances more or less worked. Before that they were just an idea that no one could effectuate. It's possible that had the Soviet Union survived that it might have ultimately evolved a system of checks and balances that would have kept it from being a monster, once again, we'll never know. But it had serious issues even if it hadn't killed an estimated 30-50 million of it's own people, not including two wars with germany. But people have build socialist states many times. It's not your place or mine to say that they didn't. They attempted, said they had done it, and that was acceptable to the rest of the world to call them socialist states, just like much of the world is called democracies. Occassionally the phrase "fledgling democracy" or "flawed democracy" is used when refering to places like Iran, so it would be logical to assume that socialist states that were too imperfect would gain similar qualifiers when refered to by other socialist leaning nations. In America, we don't call the United States a "flawed democracy" but in many ways it is. But despite it's myriad flaws and ways in which it falls short of the ideal, it's still close enough to call a "democracy."
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Jim Jones had a psudo Christian cult that killed hundreds. Now because he called himself Christian, because he called his cult a Christian church, does that mean that all Christians are evil or does it mean that evil doers want to hide behind otherwise noble ideas?
You missed my point. I argued this one already. Manson said he was a Socialist. But his six people or so made 1/billionth of the world's population, roughly a third of which was living under one social state or another at the time, so 1/300,000,000th of the world's socialist citizenry. Therefore he's not representative. Jim Jones is in no way representative of the world's Christians in the same way. But if these christian child abuse cases become too widespread, than sure, that will become a characteristic of christianity. Christianity, as it is practiced, has very little to do with the life of Jesus, dare I say, nearly nothing. It's a collective belief system which is best described as the average belief and action of the sum total of its followers.
Plato and Aristotle argued whether the form was a guiding force (plato) or the abstract of the extant reality (aristotle) but neither would have held that the thing was the idea if it did not completely reflect t
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