Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Not that anyone cares
But I lost my internet connection for 3 weeks or so. In case anyone wondered where i was.
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
Doublethink And Selective Insanity
I have recently finished reading George Orwell’s 1984, after starting and stopping over several months. One of the concepts in the novel is doublethink.
“The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them . . . . To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies — all this is indispensably necessary.”
This strikes me as an awful lot like the rabid right-wingers, those diehard Republicans who refuse reason. In order to still support Mr. Bush, one must create a alternate reality, where one is protected from the stark hypocrisy of the current administration. This makes for rather amusing conversations and quite frustrating debates.
This world where right-wingers live is a very different world where normal people live (called reality).
In this world, Mr. Bush is always right; Iraq had WMDs, but they were spirited off to Syria or Iran (which we must now invade); the “surge” is working (or conversely, the surge is failing because of liberals and Democrats); torture, wiretapping, detaining and rendition are necessary to nation security; that “the terrorists will follow us home” if we leave Iraq; tax cuts for the rich help the economy, in the face of crumbling infrastructure and debt; the poor are poor because they’re lazy; abortion is murder but killing people in war, as well as executions, is Godly.
This list is obviously not complete. A person could write a book on the subject.
There is no reasoning for right-wingers, as they live in this bubble. Accepting any ideas that are unorthodox, would cause their world to collapse. Rather, they need constant reassurance from Fox News and right-wing radio, who will tell them what they want (and need) to hear, as well as protecting them from the truth (this is another point made in 1984).
What is really scary, is that they honestly believe they’re right. They are completely incapable of compromise. Call it, selective insanity. And these people are in charge of the government; with their fingers on the nuclear trigger.
We are truly doomed.
“The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them . . . . To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies — all this is indispensably necessary.”
This strikes me as an awful lot like the rabid right-wingers, those diehard Republicans who refuse reason. In order to still support Mr. Bush, one must create a alternate reality, where one is protected from the stark hypocrisy of the current administration. This makes for rather amusing conversations and quite frustrating debates.
This world where right-wingers live is a very different world where normal people live (called reality).
In this world, Mr. Bush is always right; Iraq had WMDs, but they were spirited off to Syria or Iran (which we must now invade); the “surge” is working (or conversely, the surge is failing because of liberals and Democrats); torture, wiretapping, detaining and rendition are necessary to nation security; that “the terrorists will follow us home” if we leave Iraq; tax cuts for the rich help the economy, in the face of crumbling infrastructure and debt; the poor are poor because they’re lazy; abortion is murder but killing people in war, as well as executions, is Godly.
This list is obviously not complete. A person could write a book on the subject.
There is no reasoning for right-wingers, as they live in this bubble. Accepting any ideas that are unorthodox, would cause their world to collapse. Rather, they need constant reassurance from Fox News and right-wing radio, who will tell them what they want (and need) to hear, as well as protecting them from the truth (this is another point made in 1984).
What is really scary, is that they honestly believe they’re right. They are completely incapable of compromise. Call it, selective insanity. And these people are in charge of the government; with their fingers on the nuclear trigger.
We are truly doomed.
Monday, August 27, 2007
What it is to be a Liberal
What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label "Liberal?" If by "Liberal" they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer's dollar, then the record of this party and its members demonstrate that we are not that kind of "Liberal." But if by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people -- their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties -- someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal."
But first, I would like to say what I understand the word "Liberal" to mean and explain in the process why I consider myself to be a "Liberal," and what it means in the presidential election of 1960.
In short, having set forth my view -- I hope for all time -- two nights ago in Houston, on the proper relationship between church and state, I want to take the opportunity to set forth my views on the proper relationship between the state and the citizen. This is my political credo:
I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human liberty as the source of national action, in the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas. It is, I believe, the faith in our fellow citizens as individuals and as people that lies at the heart of the liberal faith. For liberalism is not so much a party creed or set of fixed platform promises as it is an attitude of mind and heart, a faith in man's ability through the experiences of his reason and judgment to increase for himself and his fellow men the amount of justice and freedom and brotherhood which all human life deserves.
I believe also in the United States of America, in the promise that it contains and has contained throughout our history of producing a society so abundant and creative and so free and responsible that it cannot only fulfill the aspirations of its citizens, but serve equally well as a beacon for all mankind. I do not believe in a superstate. I see no magic in tax dollars which are sent to Washington and then returned. I abhor the waste and incompetence of large-scale federal bureaucracies in this administration as well as in others. I do not favor state compulsion when voluntary individual effort can do the job and do it well. But I believe in a government which acts, which exercises its full powers and full responsibilities. Government is an art and a precious obligation; and when it has a job to do, I believe it should do it. And this requires not only great ends but that we propose concrete means of achieving them.
Our responsibility is not discharged by announcement of virtuous ends. Our responsibility is to achieve these objectives with social invention, with political skill, and executive vigor. I believe for these reasons that liberalism is our best and only hope in the world today. For the liberal society is a free society, and it is at the same time and for that reason a strong society. Its strength is drawn from the will of free people committed to great ends and peacefully striving to meet them. Only liberalism, in short, can repair our national power, restore our national purpose, and liberate our national energies. And the only basic issue in the 1960 campaign is whether our government will fall in a conservative rut and die there, or whether we will move ahead in the liberal spirit of daring, of breaking new ground, of doing in our generation what Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman and Adlai Stevenson did in their time of influence and responsibility.
Our liberalism has its roots in our diverse origins. Most of us are descended from that segment of the American population which was once called an immigrant minority. Today, along with our children and grandchildren, we do not feel minor. We feel proud of our origins and we are not second to any group in our sense of national purpose. For many years New York represented the new frontier to all those who came from the ends of the earth to find new opportunity and new freedom, generations of men and women who fled from the despotism of the czars, the horrors of the Nazis, the tyranny of hunger, who came here to the new frontier in the State of New York. These men and women, a living cross section of American history, indeed, a cross section of the entire world's history of pain and hope, made of this city not only a new world of opportunity, but a new world of the spirit as well.
Tonight we salute Governor and Senator Herbert Lehman as a symbol of that spirit, and as a reminder that the fight for full constitutional rights for all Americans is a fight that must be carried on in 1961.
Many of these same immigrant families produced the pioneers and builders of the American labor movement. They are the men who sweated in our shops, who struggled to create a union, and who were driven by longing for education for their children and for the children's development. They went to night schools; they built their own future, their union's future, and their country's future, brick by brick, block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood, and now in their children's time, suburb by suburb.
Tonight we salute George Meany as a symbol of that struggle and as a reminder that the fight to eliminate poverty and human exploitation is a fight that goes on in our day. But in 1960 the cause of liberalism cannot content itself with carrying on the fight for human justice and economic liberalism here at home. For here and around the world the fear of war hangs over us every morning and every night. It lies, expressed or silent, in the minds of every American. We cannot banish it by repeating that we are economically first or that we are militarily first, for saying so doesn't make it so. More will be needed than goodwill missions or talking back to Soviet politicians or increasing the tempo of the arms race. More will be needed than good intentions, for we know where that paving leads.
In Winston Churchill's words, "We cannot escape our dangers by recoiling from them. We dare not pretend such dangers do not exist."
And tonight we salute Adlai Stevenson as an eloquent spokesman for the effort to achieve an intelligent foreign policy. Our opponents would like the people to believe that in a time of danger it would be hazardous to change the administration that has brought us to this time of danger. I think it would be hazardous not to change. I think it would be hazardous to continue four more years of stagnation and indifference here at home and abroad, of starving the underpinnings of our national power, including not only our defense but our image abroad as a friend.
This is an important election -- in many ways as important as any this century -- and I think that the Democratic Party and the Liberal Party here in New York, and those who believe in progress all over the United States, should be associated with us in this great effort.
The reason that Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman and Adlai Stevenson had influence abroad, and the United States in their time had it, was because they moved this country here at home, because they stood for something here in the United States, for expanding the benefits of our society to our own people, and the people around the world looked to us as a symbol of hope.
I think it is our task to re-create the same atmosphere in our own time. Our national elections have often proved to be the turning point in the course of our country. I am proposing that 1960 be another turning point in the history of the great Republic.
Some pundits are saying it's 1928 all over again. I say it's 1932 all over again. I say this is the great opportunity that we will have in our time to move our people and this country and the people of the free world beyond the new frontiers of the 1960s.
But first, I would like to say what I understand the word "Liberal" to mean and explain in the process why I consider myself to be a "Liberal," and what it means in the presidential election of 1960.
In short, having set forth my view -- I hope for all time -- two nights ago in Houston, on the proper relationship between church and state, I want to take the opportunity to set forth my views on the proper relationship between the state and the citizen. This is my political credo:
I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human liberty as the source of national action, in the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas. It is, I believe, the faith in our fellow citizens as individuals and as people that lies at the heart of the liberal faith. For liberalism is not so much a party creed or set of fixed platform promises as it is an attitude of mind and heart, a faith in man's ability through the experiences of his reason and judgment to increase for himself and his fellow men the amount of justice and freedom and brotherhood which all human life deserves.
I believe also in the United States of America, in the promise that it contains and has contained throughout our history of producing a society so abundant and creative and so free and responsible that it cannot only fulfill the aspirations of its citizens, but serve equally well as a beacon for all mankind. I do not believe in a superstate. I see no magic in tax dollars which are sent to Washington and then returned. I abhor the waste and incompetence of large-scale federal bureaucracies in this administration as well as in others. I do not favor state compulsion when voluntary individual effort can do the job and do it well. But I believe in a government which acts, which exercises its full powers and full responsibilities. Government is an art and a precious obligation; and when it has a job to do, I believe it should do it. And this requires not only great ends but that we propose concrete means of achieving them.
Our responsibility is not discharged by announcement of virtuous ends. Our responsibility is to achieve these objectives with social invention, with political skill, and executive vigor. I believe for these reasons that liberalism is our best and only hope in the world today. For the liberal society is a free society, and it is at the same time and for that reason a strong society. Its strength is drawn from the will of free people committed to great ends and peacefully striving to meet them. Only liberalism, in short, can repair our national power, restore our national purpose, and liberate our national energies. And the only basic issue in the 1960 campaign is whether our government will fall in a conservative rut and die there, or whether we will move ahead in the liberal spirit of daring, of breaking new ground, of doing in our generation what Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman and Adlai Stevenson did in their time of influence and responsibility.
Our liberalism has its roots in our diverse origins. Most of us are descended from that segment of the American population which was once called an immigrant minority. Today, along with our children and grandchildren, we do not feel minor. We feel proud of our origins and we are not second to any group in our sense of national purpose. For many years New York represented the new frontier to all those who came from the ends of the earth to find new opportunity and new freedom, generations of men and women who fled from the despotism of the czars, the horrors of the Nazis, the tyranny of hunger, who came here to the new frontier in the State of New York. These men and women, a living cross section of American history, indeed, a cross section of the entire world's history of pain and hope, made of this city not only a new world of opportunity, but a new world of the spirit as well.
Tonight we salute Governor and Senator Herbert Lehman as a symbol of that spirit, and as a reminder that the fight for full constitutional rights for all Americans is a fight that must be carried on in 1961.
Many of these same immigrant families produced the pioneers and builders of the American labor movement. They are the men who sweated in our shops, who struggled to create a union, and who were driven by longing for education for their children and for the children's development. They went to night schools; they built their own future, their union's future, and their country's future, brick by brick, block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood, and now in their children's time, suburb by suburb.
Tonight we salute George Meany as a symbol of that struggle and as a reminder that the fight to eliminate poverty and human exploitation is a fight that goes on in our day. But in 1960 the cause of liberalism cannot content itself with carrying on the fight for human justice and economic liberalism here at home. For here and around the world the fear of war hangs over us every morning and every night. It lies, expressed or silent, in the minds of every American. We cannot banish it by repeating that we are economically first or that we are militarily first, for saying so doesn't make it so. More will be needed than goodwill missions or talking back to Soviet politicians or increasing the tempo of the arms race. More will be needed than good intentions, for we know where that paving leads.
In Winston Churchill's words, "We cannot escape our dangers by recoiling from them. We dare not pretend such dangers do not exist."
And tonight we salute Adlai Stevenson as an eloquent spokesman for the effort to achieve an intelligent foreign policy. Our opponents would like the people to believe that in a time of danger it would be hazardous to change the administration that has brought us to this time of danger. I think it would be hazardous not to change. I think it would be hazardous to continue four more years of stagnation and indifference here at home and abroad, of starving the underpinnings of our national power, including not only our defense but our image abroad as a friend.
This is an important election -- in many ways as important as any this century -- and I think that the Democratic Party and the Liberal Party here in New York, and those who believe in progress all over the United States, should be associated with us in this great effort.
The reason that Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman and Adlai Stevenson had influence abroad, and the United States in their time had it, was because they moved this country here at home, because they stood for something here in the United States, for expanding the benefits of our society to our own people, and the people around the world looked to us as a symbol of hope.
I think it is our task to re-create the same atmosphere in our own time. Our national elections have often proved to be the turning point in the course of our country. I am proposing that 1960 be another turning point in the history of the great Republic.
Some pundits are saying it's 1928 all over again. I say it's 1932 all over again. I say this is the great opportunity that we will have in our time to move our people and this country and the people of the free world beyond the new frontiers of the 1960s.
Friday, August 17, 2007
On a new Goverment Part 1
I've long had a distrust for politicians . For awhile after the Democrats took Congress, I felt hope; now I'm not so disillusioned. The problem, in my opinion is that Senators and Congressmen are more concerned with 1) Money 2)Power
ALL politicians care about their jobs. They'll do whatever it takes to be reelected. In this day and age, the one with the greater war chest, wins. With ads space that runs very high, and small time contributions will not cover this. They will resort to using large sums of money gotten from Corporations. Of course, these businesses don't do this out of karma, they expect favors. And so the cycle continues.
The best way to eliminate these to factors, is to
- put a term limit on Congressmen
- to create a Public Campaign Fund.
- create a large number of political parties with electable candidates.
The term limit could be, say, 6 years. After that, you can't be elected again. I know it seems radical, this will bring fresh blood into American politics and break up political capitol. With no re-election to plan for, Congressmen can finally do their jobs; represent their constituents, not Big Business.
I'm still not sure how best to approach Public Campaign Funds, but I know it's very important to implement. Every candidate will have the same amount of money to spend however they please. This will bring more then just the 2 viable candidates from today's system; more political parties with a varying views and platforms. Which leads to Point 3....
In this country presently, you have between Choice A & Choice B. A vote for a 3rd party candidate is virtually a vote wasted. However, what do we do when neither candidate represents us? We bite our tongue and vote for the lesser of two evils. But does that really make the system strong? (Washington warned against having many political parties; to be fair, he also warned us to stay out of Europe's business!)
How many voted for Bush in 2000, thinking "Well, at least he's not as stuffy as Gore!"? Americans deserve to be able to choose the best representative for them, who has at least some chance of being elected. Don't we want to be certain of who's finger is on the nuclear trigger?
I would suggest expanding the number of Parties to 6 or 7. With Public Campaign Funding, it would be possible to array 6-7 electable candidates with a wide spectrum of political beliefs for Congress or Presidential elections.
This wouldn't fix all our problems, but it's a good start. As someone said "Washington isn't so much a place, but a state of mind that needs to be erased."."
Little History
My name's Mike. I live in New Jersey. That's all I'll say. Favorite bands are (in no particular order): Circle Takes the Sqaure, Marilyn Manson, From First To Last and Thursday. I'm a raging liberal. In fact, I'm so far to the left I'm going to fall off. Favorite shows are Countdown, Scrubs, Bleech and South Park.
This blog will be heavy in the political commentary, though I'll throw whatever i happen to think of.
Any questions?
This blog will be heavy in the political commentary, though I'll throw whatever i happen to think of.
Any questions?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
