Fascism has more than one meaning. This defintion from Merriam-Webster online:
fits the New Left of the 60s quite well.
I listen to country sometimes, mostly the older stuff when C&W was still an authentic ethnic music. Mostly I listen to rock, and some jazz and classical. Way to stereotype, there.
Most of us were pretty apathetic about politics. But we’re talking about politics, specifically the intolerant, totalitarian attitude of the New Left, not pop culture.
KISS and David Bowie are fascist? I think they and their fans would be vastly amused to hear it.
I’m a centrist too, and of the many logical fallacies indulged in by the Right, one of the most relentless is the fallacy of the excluded middle. So much of their rhetoric involves exaggerating how far to the left their opponents are because acknowledging all that moderation out there would put their own extremism in an unfavorable light.
Heaven forbid they should give an opponent a chance to clarify what their position actually is rather than hammering him into a pigeonhole.
Say what? 9-11 was exactly what the neocons had said they wanted for years, a “new Pearl Harbor” like incident they could use to whip up war fever. And Cheney’s first reaction to 9-11 was to run around telling everyone to find a way to pin it on Saddam. Why would they be anything but overjoyed by getting exactly what they wanted?
“Rock stars are fascists. Adolf Hitler was one of the first rock stars.”–David Bowie, 1976
As for KISS, look no further than their logo. That lightning-bolt “SS” is no coincidence. (And of course I know that they’re just a bunch of Jewish guys playing with taboo imagery.)
And I think you are engaging in the standard Republican apologist game. Somehow, it’s just unthinkable that they are really as bad as their actions show them to be. They have to be well meaning people - they can’t possibly be amoral, much less outright ill-willed.
Why would I do that? I vote Democrat. I think the Republican party is, most of the time, an embarrassment to the country.
Of course they can. As in most people, my first impulse is to assign all sorts of nasty motives to political or ideological opponents, but that impulse is thoroughly suspect, and indulging it is discreditable. We look at people who believe or act or are different from ourselves, and we don’t grasp intuitively that that which we could only do cynically, they might do sincerely. That’s not to say that you can never ascribe malicious with any degree of confidence, but to do so in this case you have to fill a *huge *gap in your knowledge with nothing but conjecture. It’s lazy.
Anyway, it’s easy to expect the worst out of people – both because they do sometimes act selfishly (or even monstrously), and because intention is a complicated thing that’s totally opaque. If you presume guilt, life will conform to your assumptions.
If my memory serves me correctly, it started with the beginning of the Clinton presidency. But it wasn’t his fault. Blame it all on Rush Limbaugh. In the days following the election of 92, I was disappointed that Bush lost to Clinton and enjoyed listening to Rush on TV expounding on his opinion of Clinton. X number of days into the Clinton presidency was the daily feature. Plenty of sarcastic and vitriolic comment. It was comical at the time, but soon it became apparent that Rush was really serious.
I’m somewhat humbled, because he did have me for a time.
Truly, I believe that Rush is entirely responsible for the degree of anger/hatred that exists today between Republicans and Deomocrats.
VarlosZ, DT made a factual claim that you glossed over:
I certainly remember hearing something like this happening. You can cast a little bit of doubt on it, but I certainly got the impression as events unfolded the the Bush Adminl. was exploiting the newly militarized mood of the American people post-9/11 to push through their invasion of Iraq, which was clearly something that they had been wanting to do.
In the first place, “certainly remember hearing something like this happening” is a big part of why I’m arguing the way I am. A no-doubt disputed account or characterization from a book or magazine article that everyone here knows about through half-remembered second-hand descriptions becomes an assumed fact. So it is also with declarations that “neocons” had been saying that they wanted “a new Pearl Harbor.” Which neocons? Do they have anything to do with Bush et al.? Did they say they *wanted *an attack, or just that they thought nothing else would convince people? Did they *say *they wanted an attack, or is that another projection of impure motives?
More directly on point: sure, like I said, I assume (but can not prove) that the Cheney White House had already wanted to go to Iraq, and that 9/11 made that possible. But they only “exploited” 9/11 if you thought going to Iraq was a bad idea. If you thought it was a *good *idea, then they were right to take advantage of the opportunity presented in order to do what they believed to be the right thing.
And none of this speaks to the notion – the one I initially objected to – that Bush & co. looked as 9/11 and specifically, consciously thought, “Good! Now we launch wars that will scare people into voting Republican!”
So? The Democrats make excuses for the Republicans all the time. The Republicans wouldn’t get away with half of what they do if the Democrats weren’t constantly covering for them and turning a blind eye. It’s the great strength of the Republicans; they are given far more leeway than the Democrats, held to lower standards by both sides.
No. The Republicans are consistently ruthless or outright malignant. They consistently demonstrate zero concern for the country or for human life. They consistently fail to demonstrate any moral restraint whatsoever. Why should I believe that this one time they secretly have good motives? Especially since, again, 9-11 was exactly what they’d been wanting for years.
I was listening to Rush Limbaugh during those days, even before the election when Clinton was the nominee, and Limbaugh’s big thing at that time was what a liar Clinton was. There were other things he’s hammer Clinton and the Democrats for, true, but the biggest by far was Clinton’s propensity to lie whenever he felt it suited his purposes. I recall Limbaugh making fun of some accomplished liberal professor (whose name escapes me at the moment) saying something to the effect of “*Of course *he’s lying - he’s running for President!” In other words, the ends justify the means and the presidency is too important to allow yourself to be shot down by accurate statements made about your behavior and the things you’ve said in the past.
It’s my belief that Clinton came in for all the hate he came in for precisely because of his dishonesty. He was the most blatantly dishonest politician I can recall in my lifetime. I’ve often wondered if he and Hilary don’t chuckle to themselves in private moments over all the obvious lies they can tell and still get people to vote for them. Clinton also showed a propensity to throw the various women he’d abused under the bus, abusing them even further by attempting to destroy their character and portray them as opportunistic liars or paid-for Republican puppets.
He was too clever by half, too immoral, and too willing to do anything if it served his position as president. His opponents detested these qualities about him, and the longer it went on the more they hated him. Had Clinton been more clever than he thought he was about his lies, ruthless ambition and lack of character, he’d have come in for only the standard opposition that you’d expect from members of the opposition party. Instead he virtually manufactured enemies through his own personal failings, and that’s where most of the hate came from.
Well, that and his early attempt to create a co-presidency for his arrogant and usurporious wife.
So, put all these things together and you have a breeding ground for lots of hate, much of it understandable.
I would agree however that Limbaugh is a considerable reason for the hatred and scorn coming from the right these days. Before him it all came from the left and the right had no voice. The liberal view was promoted - albeit more slowly and subtly - by the mainstream media, Hollywood movies, television, and the entertainment and news magazines.
For several decades all we heard coming from the public stage were intimations or outright accusations about how square, stupid, racist and sexist conservatives were…you know, pretty much the Straight Dope writ large. With the advent of talk radio and cable television, the left no longer had a monopoly on how the issues were portrayed and began to fight back. This caused the left to fight back even more vigorously and the right to fight back even more vigorously and eventually we got to where we are today.
Still and all, had the standards of civil personal behavior remained what they were prior to the late sixties, things would never have gotten this far…in a lot of ways. You reap what you sow and most of the societal problems that exist today have grown from the seeds planted by the left in the sixties and fed and nourished by the left since then.
:rolleyes: Yeah, right. Clinton was clearly unusually honest for a politician or they wouldn’t have had to impeach him over lying about a blowjob. And the Republicans are the ones who were terrorizing the women in his life, even to the extent of Ken Starr & minions abusing them and threatening them with death in attempts to get them to make false accusations against him.
As for most dishonest recent President? Bush II, easily; he was an almost compulsive liar about everything, great and small.
True; Obama would almost certainly have been killed instead of being allowed to take office.
I’m not sure what you’d consider a “reputable cite”, but his abusive treatment of Susan McDougal was well known, including forcing her to wear a red dress which in the prison she was held in is only worn by child killers. A group that is naturally in danger from other prisoners.
How would you know that? Of course it seems that way to you: *you *want to be more critical of the Republicans than most, therefore they will necessarily seem to receive less criticism than they ought to. You’re unable to get to an objective viewpoint. That’s not your fault, but ideally one would recognize this fact and try to correct for it by, at least, tempering his opinion.
Like I said earlier: if you presume guilt, the world will conform to your expectations.
I am familiar with the Project For a New American Century. While acknowledging that (like many think-tanks) it exerted some influence, I would say that discussion of the group frequently resembles nothing so much as Glenn Beck’s show.
They were not accusations. They were statements of fact. Conservatives were the ones railing against rock’n’roll and invented reefer madness. They were the ones who refuse to allow evolution be taught in schools. They were the ones who were created segregation. They were the ones who campaigned against first, women suffrage, then birth control, then the Equal Rights Amendment.
I think too many conservatives don’t want to admit to themselves that they want America to return to the ‘golden age’ of the late 1800s. The land before the crazy music started appearing on the radio, every school desk had a copy of the Bible, ‘coloreds’ knew their place, and business and politics were the dominion of men - men of wealth that is. Poll taxes and literacy tests discriminated against the poor, no matter what the color of their skin.
Every major progressive advance over the last century has been fought against conservatives who wanted to maintain a status quo that only reflected their interests. They have fought against every attempt at creating the more inclusive society we have now. A society that is becoming more progressive as younger generations come of age that have benefited from growing up in that inclusive society.
I don’t know what mythical standards of behavior you are referring to. Americans have never been civil to one another except for a brief period during WWII and shortly after. The 50s and 60s saw conflict over civil rights, Communist scares, labor protests - everything we see today. The 20’s and 30’s saw the same things as well. Public discourse has been driven by sensationalism and yellow journalism since before the turn of the [last] century.
The Pleasantville portrayals exemplified by Leave It To Beaver and My Three Sons ignored the social upheavals going on around them since they were vehicles for advertising corporate products. They did not want people to think, only to consume. And so they created a stereotype that has never existed. And it worked since many people preferred the fantasy of Mayfield to the real world they had to deal with. People say the Twilight Zone was the greatest sci-fi show ever made, yet compared to Leave It To Beaver, that was the show grounded in reality.
As to the OP, there was a brief period of bi-partisanship in the early '80s due to the personal relationship between Tip O’Neill and Reagan. Though they were adversarial in public, they could work together to pass legislation. That period ended with Iran-Contra and the Bork nomination. Neither affair produced centrists - Oliver North (and his cronies) and Robert Bork were polarized as either heroes or villains. And it was draw on the political sides - Bork’s nomination was blocked (only to lead to Clarence Thomas a few years later - another polarizing event) - and no real convictions over Iran-Contra. The battle lines had been redrawn. Dirty politics re-appeared with Lee Atwater’s campaign for Bush in '88, and then the main reason for bi-partisanship - countering the Soviet Union - disappeared and has not been since. Clinton’s election and failed health care plan ramped up the hate even more, but I doubt any Democratic president would have been safe from the strategy of persona attack politics.
And I don’t really understand the right wing hatred of Clinton - he passed every major piece of legislation crafted by the Republican congress - NAFTA, telecom deregulation, welfare ‘reform’ (more like dismemberment), banking reform, digital rights management, expanded the death penalty, etc. The only liberal ‘reforms’ he made were DADT and modest gun control legislation, and that was not even close to what liberals were after. So what was so horrible about this guy whose biggest lie was that he claimed to be liberal, but caved on every liberals cared about?
In your opinion. Which is substantiated by nothing other than your subjective recollections. Which are subjective. And probably loaded by confirmation bias. And subjective.