Showing posts with label left right paradigm. Show all posts
Showing posts with label left right paradigm. Show all posts

Friday, July 29, 2011

Is America Caught In The Closed Mind Trap?

From Prison Planet.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
Prisonplanet.com
July 29, 2011


...When I wrote that the Republicans’ fixation with slashing the social safety net–a throw away line that is in every news report on the debt ceiling imbroglio–could turn out to be a threat to the separation of powers, several Republican partisans took extraordinary offense. Only a no-good liberal propagandist would claim that Republicans wanted to slash the safety net. My statement of an obvious fact reflected in the Republicans own proposals was all that it took for my critics to conclude that a notorious Reaganite was a Republican-hating liberal.
It is annoying that people who have no idea what they are talking about are so ready to pop off. But it is discouraging to a writer that people are so emotional that they cannot follow an argument. Discouraged, in part by block-headed readers and from censorship of my writings by various Internet sites, I quit my column a while back and signed off.
I was beset by thousands of emails pleading and demanding that I continue to write.
I relented, and the emails from thoughtful readers keep me going.
It is rewarding to hear from intelligent and open-minded people. But as the weeks and months go by, I find it ever more tiresome to tolerate closed minds spewing hate and ignorance. I have become convinced that there are enough frustrated and ignorant people out there to constitute a movement for a Fuhrer.
Washington, which has produced a long list of disastrous policy decisions since the collapse of the Soviet Empire two decades ago, will no doubt continue making incredible mistakes about everything, and we will end up with a Caesar or a Fuhrer...

Paul Craig Roberts, a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, has been reporting shocking cases of prosecutorial abuse for two decades. A new edition of his book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, co-authored with Lawrence Stratton, a documented account of how Americans lost the protection of law, has been released by Random House.

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Once Again, Fox Masquerades GOP Activist As Concerned Parent To Attack Unions

I understand that Media Matters in its criticism of Alex Jones is completely off the mark. However the Tea Party is foolish to attack unions.

Why is it so hard for the Tea Party, or even some in the libertarian right to understand? It is the powerful, the corporate oligarchs and the elite, who want the unions gone. They want the middle class to suffer, and they want more money for themselves. That isn't freedom but exploitation.

The progressive left is equally foolish when it attacks 9/11 Truth, Alex Jones, or the Second Amendment.

Why is it so hard to see that 9/11 Truth, the libertarian right, as well as the unions, and the progressive left, need to get together to fight the real enemy, namely, the corrupt establishment (both corporate and government) pulling the strings in the shadows of America, leading it further into financial ruin, brutal inequality, a police state, and needless war and imperialism.

Ron Paul and Ralph Nader have suggested such an alliance. Perhaps it is the only alliance which could advert a catastrophe for America in the future. Stop bickering and find the common ground against the common enemy.

From Media Matters.

This morning, Fox & Friends hosted an "upset Wisconsin parent" to discuss her objection to Wisconsin public schools' teaching of labor union history. Left unsaid during the segment: The parent, Amber Hahn, is also a local GOP official...

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

A Recipe for Fascism

I don't agree with everything in this article, but the general idea of it is right on track.

From Truthout

Monday 08 November 2010
by: Chris Hedges | Truthdig | Op-Ed

...More than half of those identified in a poll by the Republican-leaning Rasmussen Reports as “mainstream Americans” now view the tea party favorably. The other half, still grounded in a reality-based world, is passive and apathetic. The liberal class wastes its energy imploring Barack Obama and the Democrats to promote sane measures including job creation programs, regulation as well as criminal proceedings against the financial industry, and an end to our permanent war economy. Those who view the tea party favorably want to tear the governmental edifice down, with the odd exception of the military and the security state, accelerating our plunge into a nation of masters and serfs. The corporate state, unchallenged, continues to turn everything, including human beings and the natural world, into commodities to exploit until exhaustion or collapse.

All sides of the political equation are lackeys for Wall Street. They sanction, through continued deregulation, massive corporate profits and the obscene compensation and bonuses for corporate managers. Most of that money—hundreds of billions of dollars—is funneled upward from the U.S. Treasury. The Sarah Palins and the Glenn Becks use hatred as a mobilizing passion to get the masses, fearful and angry, to call for their own enslavement...

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

The Left Right Paradigm is Over: Its You vs. Corporations

From The Big Picture.


Every generation or so, a major secular shift takes place that shakes up the existing paradigm. It happens in industry, finance, literature, sports, manufacturing, technology, entertainment, travel, communication, etc.

I would like to discuss the paradigm shift that is occurring in politics.

For a long time, American politics has been defined by a Left/Right dynamic. It was Liberals versus Conservatives on a variety of issues. Pro-Life versus Pro-Choice, Tax Cuts vs. More Spending, Pro-War vs Peaceniks, Environmental Protections vs. Economic Growth, Pro-Union vs. Union-Free, Gay Marriage vs. Family Values, School Choice vs. Public Schools, Regulation vs. Free Markets.

The new dynamic, however, has moved past the old Left Right paradigm. We now live in an era defined by increasing Corporate influence and authority over the individual. These two “interest groups” – I can barely suppress snorting derisively over that phrase – have been on a headlong collision course for decades, which came to a head with the financial collapse and bailouts. Where there is massive concentrations of wealth and influence, there will be abuse of power. The Individual has been supplanted in the political process nearly entirely by corporate money, legislative influence, campaign contributions, even free speech rights.

This may not be a brilliant insight, but it is surely an overlooked one. It is now an Individual vs. Corporate debate – and the Humans are losing...

Saturday, August 28, 2010

The Kochtopus

From Cryptogon.


If the Democrats are the solution to the Kochtopus, the U.S. is far more screwed than even I believed possible. The Tea Party is the 2010, 180 degrees out of phase version of Hope and Change. Whether your cabin is on the port or the starboard side of the Ship of Fools, the destination is the same; oblivion. I don’t know what it will take to get the shit for brains Left and the shit for brains Right to understand that billionaires, and the governments that serve them, don’t have their best interests in mind. But, until that basic law of the universe is understood, there’s always the next election… *sigh* Good luck with that.