I can't believe I'm about to say this, and I can already feel the vomit entering my throat as I write this, but Cassius made one of the more insightful and accurate posts in this thread.
I'll just remind the laptop leftists here that what is in question here is not what are the United States's motives for bombing ISIS, etc. are, but what are Sanders's motives for doing such, else you devolve into circular reasoning: OMG HE VOTED FOR WAR BECAUSE HE'S AN IMPERIALIST!!! OMG HE'S AN IMPERIALIST BECAUSE HE VOTED FOR WAR!!! It is the intellectual equivalent of opposing a minimum wage increase because it OMG, KEEPS THE MASSES QUIET INSTEAD OF THIRSTING FOR DAH REVOLUTION!!!, and tarring anyone who voted for the minimum wage increase as an evil capitalist conspirator. On the other hand, this IS TNF we're talking about. Now that I think of it, democracy could well be considered the opiate of the masses, waiting for the inevitable smorgasbord about that.
And this is a quote from a completely different conversation, but I think it deserves merit (on the Florange factory nationalization):
Exactly! It's a goddamn symbol! And caring about symbols more than about actually finding solutions to actualy problems is exactly what's wrong with French politics. Those politicians actually think that a few symbols will magically solve everything. Whether it's True Leftist symbols or austerity symbols, nobody cares about carrying out actual policies. Because we know, making symbols is so cool! It's cheap and the people love it! Who needs to actually do stuff?
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Again, this whole idea that Bernie Sanders is an imperialist pig because he voted against a stupid symbol is pointless, because it's just an idiotic SYMBOL. It's pointless because we already new how he felt about the Iraq war, because he VOTED AGAINST IT. A) A vote to defund the military is pointless because there's no way it would succeed and it's better to spend political capital on other, non-idiotic symbol legislation. B) Even if it HAD succeeded, what good would defunding a branch of the government do? The only recent times it's happened were in 1995 and 2013, when the dunces in tin-foil hats tried to defund the government, and what good, political or legislative, did it do them? Do you think that Bush would have pulled the troops out, and surrender like that? Do you think the media wouldn't report on stories of soldiers who wouldn't have to fight without "adequate equipment". Is Sanders an imperialist for voting against the one sure way a rally-round-the -flag electorate would give Bush a supermajority in the senate, or even higher? On the other hand, I guess that might speed of DIE NEUE NOVEMBERREVOLUTION by twenty minutes or so.
I have to agree with Tony that I'd much rather listen to Rumsfeld talk foreign policy than TNF. Remember this is the guy who:
Calls Sanders an imperialist for supporting a US war because the US militarily supports governments in Israel and Saudi Arabia while at the same time:
Denouncing WWII because we had the temerity to cut off military trade with the genocidal, ACTUAL imperialist Japanese regime as a backdoor to war, yet at the same time:
Supporting the Civil War despite the fact that Fort Sumter is the textbook example of a back door to war; the South voted to actually peacefully secede, unlike the latest marxist chew toy, those royalist Scots; the union strategy was the first modern example of total war, epitomized by Sherman's march to the sea, which literally destroyed anything and everything in its path (let's remember that 75% of the south did not own slaves, and were thus not subject to TNF's "slaveowners must die" declaration). Also, let us not forget that Lincoln was an actual racist, that he propped up a bloody general like Grant, and that he never bothered to actually, you know, free the slaves. until the war was essentially over.
TL;DR: TNF and those like him have no grasp of foreign policy, politics, or history.
Also, based on recent responses it seems that only the
treue leftists, epitomized by TNF and SWE, and possibly (probably?) Snowstalker when he comes on, actually believe any of this marxist drivel, which is the most heartening sign I've seen from this poll yet.
EDIT: just to make clear, I do think the civil war was justified (not an idiot). And if I may make a little prediction, my bet is that Kshama Sawant will be next on the chopping block because she had the audacity to denounce both Hamas and Israel. On the other hand, she may already have been guillotined for all I know.
The bright spot is that this new "movement" will be irrelevant, because it does not, nor will it have any sizable base, nor will it have any big money groups pumping money to maintain an astroturf coalition. So hopefully we can just let the Leninists, Trotskyists, Stalinists, Maoists, and Hoxhaists continue their pointless internecine catfight, and thus remaining irrelevant to the rest of us.
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