The Sam Spade Memorial Good Post Gallery

[Antonio the Sixth]

Oh my God we're back at it again. Post these one-liners in the Lief Reservoir, please.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Well, I'm glad to be the first poster to publish a legitimate entry:

My histtorical analysis of Martin Van Buren has very little do with his anti-slavery views.  It had more to do wiith Antonio V's conclusions.  Slavery was too much of a grey area issue that involved everyone from moralistic Puritans to Know Nothings to German Marxists.  Any objective historian should mention the Puritan work ethic (hardly a liberal philosophy) alongside the "Commuunist Manifesto reasing radicals" when discussing it.

In regards to big government vs. small government I believe that is an oversimplification of old school politics.  You ask any random Democratic politician why they are Democrats I doubt very many of them will say "well because they happen to be the liberal party at the moment."  Very few people go into politics thinking that their political party could "change sides" at any moment (blue dogs and "moderate" New Englanders are the exceptions, not the rule).  If you asked most Democratic officeholders why they are Democrats you will more than likely hear something along the lines of "the Democratic Party is the party of the working class", "Democrats fight for the poor", etc. etc. etc..  This is the point that gets missed alot, but what has changed over the past hundred and fifty years is not the ends of liberalism, but the means.

You have to rememberr that for the vast majority of human history that oligarchial rule had been the rule and not the exception.  In Old Europe monarchs and their Parliaments (which were generally used to expand the influence and authority of rich landowners) used the power of government to institute regressive taxation to keep the poor in perpetual poverty (one of the causes of the French Revolution).  Further, laws like the Penal Laws used big government laws to disenfranchise and strip millions of people of many things we would consider basic political rights like free speech, the right to own property, the right to marry, and the right not to swear allegiance to the Anglican Church.
Government intervention was used far more on the side of the wealthy and powerful than it was to advance the cause of the disadvantaged up to that point in history.  Thus why small government back then was often viewed as a liberal view more so than a conservative one.  This attitude would be dominant in liberal psyche until about the early 20th century when liberals started adopting the socialistic (emphasis) arguments in favor of turning the "tool of the rich" against them.  It should be noted that as late as the 1910s that labor unions were skeptical of government intervention into the workplace (something that showed up in the aftermath of that New York City fire that the Democratically controlled (emphasis) New York Assembly passed workplace safety laws on).

As it regards American politics, policies like high tariffs were generally viewed as "the rich milking the poor" for good reason.  Free Trade has only become a conservative view in recent times due to the international workplace and globalization where any rich first world country can move operations overseas.  Back in the day it took months for trade shipments to reach port and the third world working conditions were happening in Lowell and not Laos (very hard to blame low tariffs for low pay in other words).  Factory workers were paid barely survivable wages while working inhumane hours while their robber baron bosses made hand over fist.  Protectionism in theory benefits the entire community, but the Gilded Age revealed it to be little more than a scheme for rich industrialists to force everyone poorer than them to buy their overpriced goods while providing very little benefits or pay improvements for their laborers (and thus why no sane economist recommends returning to it).  Free trade had such a strong following among the working class due to the idea that free and fair competition between domestic and foreign companies (remember, this was before globalization) would force domestic owners to increase worker wages in order to motivate labor to produce the best product at the lowest price possible (something Cleveland and Bryan agreed on).  Basically, the concept of perfect competition.

In regards to internal improvements, Democratic opposition to such improvement was widely based on the knowledge that said improvements would be made at the cost of the poor (crippling taxes and tariffs rarely felt by domestic industry but definitely by the poor farmer and laborer) for the benefit of the middle and upper classes (remember middle class is much smaller).  Further, working conditions on such projects were far from humane, as the several hundred strikes by Irish work gangs before the Civil War would show.
A comparison with the Keystone XL Pipeline could be made re: environmental impact.  Just because something is sold as "improving people's lives" don't mean it's "liberal".

Martin Van Buren, a master of New York machinery, an advocate of freer trade, who blamed the failings of the economy on a rich elite class of bankers, was hardly conservative.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Jesus F**king Christ Mint, get away from this thread.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Well, now that I have put down our resident WASP supremacist, I might as well comment further on this matter.

Obviously I would go with the first 2,000 names in the Boston telephone book.  I mean for all we know there might be several Harvard faculty from that kind of selection anyways, whereas the Harvard Faculty only guarantees that the only people who would have input are Harvard faculty.  I believe that having their knowledge is helpful, but that is not the only thing that is needed to run a society.  I feel that having all only Harvard faculty would be bad, for much the reasons that Al said plus it would accomplish nothing more than have an insulated confirmation bias among the leaders that would only end up being harmful in the long run (even the more meek among them might tend towards egotism and thus not be as receptive to the demands of the people).

Recent election results as well as referndum passes suggest that the people of Boston would not be the reactionary neanderthals that some of you suggest.

Which isn't to say there are problems with just selecting the first 2,000 people in the book whose name starts with the letter "A", which would create some resentment of course.

And also, I share a lot of TNF's sentiments on this subject.  The Ivy League's dominance of intellectual achievement and privilege is a pox on the country.  Nationalize it now and make the Blue Bloods and Lace Curtains there have to deal with the dillema of being as equal as the common working man.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I don't have lots specific to say, Indy Texas.  I really like reading your posts and I hope things turn up better soon.

What I will say I'll keep general.  Everyone goes through dry, lonely times in life.  I felt a lot of what you are describing on a personal level between the ages of 21 and 26--it was rough.  Life is always changing and, most of the time, things never stay either good or bad for first-worlders.  When things are going well, it's important not to get too cocky, and when things are going bad, it's important to hang in there and not despair.  Life is hard for most people in different ways--it's not singling you out on that score.  So, just keep going, and while you're at it, a few other things maybe to keep in mind.

It's true, I think, that meeting people often gets trickier as we grow older and social circles change.  One thing that might work is finding a hobby and then joining groups, associations, teams, societies of people who also do that.  You'll already have something important in common off the bat, and you'll meet people you'll like beyond the hobby that way.

Not trusting people or being motivated by fear of rejection won't help in the long run.  Trust is only earned through friendship.  But, a good default attitude might be not so much not to trust people, but just not to expect too much.  If you know people who don't ask you for all sorts of things when you're up and don't kick you when you're down, that's already pretty good, so stick with those types and just deal with the rest.

As far as being risk-averse, it's pretty hard, and unwise, to just start taking risks arbitrarily.  You have to find something you love, that's really meaningful to you, something that you'd like to try no matter whether you succeed or fail.  Something that you don't want to find yourself at 45 saying: "I wish I would have at least tried that."  If you have something that you really have passion for, you'll take necessary risks for it without even thinking about it.  What you do for a living is something you'll spend most of your waking hours with for the next several decades.  Make it something you love and that's meaningful to you, because work that's anything else can make life a real bummer.  "Follow your bliss;" Joseph Campbell got that one right.

That's just my two cents.  Might not work for you, everyone's different.  But it's the only two cents I have at the moment.

Hope you feel better soon, Indy.  Like I said, I enjoy your posts a lot.

Most if not all the responses in that thread would deserve to be posted here. It's pretty heartwarming to see so many posters trying their best to comfort a person who's going through hard times, and providing thoughtful advice to help him out of his predicament. I think it might really end up making a difference in IndyTX's life, or at least I hope so. Anyway, it has made me see the forum in a more positive light.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Why are so many of you comfortable with the concept of condemning a soul to an eternity of suffering because the decisions it makes in a fleeting physical existence, do not meet the ideals of a god that has endless and infinite consciousness? How callous.

No 'crime' or 'sin' or any other masochism is worthy of the infinite punishment of an infinite consciousness if that is what our soul is. None. Given that 8 seconds or 80 years or 8 million years as fractions of infinity are effectively of the same value (i.e, they are nothing), it is an eternal condemnation of a consciousness that has had no time in which to think, develop or grow with respect to itself, including reaching the 'right conclusions' as to what is good and what is just. God has has an eternity. It’s a punishment of the un-godlike for not possessing the capabilities of a god.

[Antonio the Sixth]

No post that contains >implying belongs in this thread.

[Antonio the Sixth]

There's nothing braver than standing against political correctness, am I right?

The notion of "political correctness" is a shibboleth for those who don't care about minority rights. Whenever "political correctness" is used in a pejorative manner, it sends the message that the concerns ethnic or racial minorities aren't worthwhile. Whether or not this is the intention is besides the point, whenever you use the term "political correctness", a phenomenon that doesn't have a basis in reality, as a catch-all term that may be used to lampoon the use of words that are more respectful, you send the message that you don't care.

Corporate directives that instruct employees to undertake "diversity training" may be counter-productive and the constant sectarian bickering between segments of the left over the semantics of race may be tiring but at least society is making an attempt to promote multiculturalism. Say what you will about the negative consequences of the idea of a "post-racial" America but racial intermarriage continues to increase and many racial barriers are eroding. In the broad scheme of things, we're moving in the right direction.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Mixed to negative. Charter schools and teacher evaluations are not necessarily so bad, but the zeal for performance measurement and managerialism has only made public schools worse. And it is certainly not the case that the education reform movement has succeeded in reducing the scope and expense of the administrative system that oversees public education or, for that matter, increased that system's accountability.

The two most glaring problems in American public education today are teacher recruitment and inequality in per student spending, and on the whole the reform movement doesn't seem to be effecting much improvement on either front. It's telling that so many of the most "ambitious" young teachers tend to be interested in moving to administrative positions at the earliest opportunity. That says a lot about both who is attracted to what this kind of work has become¹ and what we - or, at least, the education system - value most highly.

I dislike homeschooling and private schools, and I don't plan on having children. But if I did, I'd be extremely reluctant to place them in public schools and probably wouldn't do it unless I lacked the means to arrange anything else. The main value of public schools lies mostly in providing childcare for working parents and removing children from the supervision of abusive or neglectful caregivers.

¹And who can make it through the years of tedium and largely useless busywork that define teacher education in the United States.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Aren't most projections indicating that the world population will eventually level at around 10 billion and then begin to stagnate?

[Antonio the Sixth]

THAT POST DOES NOT BELONG IN HERE!!!!!!!

Jesus F**king Christ people.

[Antonio the Sixth]

THAT POST DOES NOT BELONG IN HERE!!!!!!!

Jesus F**king Christ people.

So, what, Beet's above screed or someone saying "fat people are fine" does? These threads are inherently a bad idea.

I'm starting to agree that the GPG is probably impossible to salvage at this point.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Don't move to Sweden.

But -- legitimate question: how are you trying to make it better? I'm not really a bootstraps-picket-fence-American-dream kind-of guy, but I recognize the power of personal choice and responsibility. How are you trying to make things better and being stifled by the structure that exists?

Thank you for your extremely polite response, Jesse.

I am just frustrated.

-I am frustrated with a country where the Indiana "law" is even being discussed
-I am frustrated with the rich getting richer despite a liberal President
-I am frustrated with Calif. installing SPIKES to deter HOMELESS people
-I am frustrated with people saying that atheists are the morally bankrupt people despite what I just said.

I'mfrustrated, bro.  That's all.  I see better things and I want better things.

Hey man I feel your pain.  But moving to Sweden is not suddenly going to make things better.  For starters you would probably have to become fluent in the language, which we all know is a real bitch.  And secondly I hear that Scandinavian social democratic paradises are actually not very friendly towards foreigners (they largely work because of "I have mine, now bugger off!").  Which I guess is about the best way I know of to say that if you are looking for a bunch of bad apples in any place you are bound to find them.

I mostly second J-Mann's advice.  Sure, we would all like a Golden Fuckin' Parachute, but that is not how life happens.  You get good times and bad times regardless of where you are at.  It is all about how you choose to deal with the shit.  Your thoughts are not that much different than millions of other people in this country.  This country is not perfect and we shouldn't be blind to the faults that exist here, but frankly fuck your defeatist narrative Hockey.  We need people like you and the whole "I'M MOVING TO CANADA!" bullshit is not helping any sincere left wing narrative in the States.  I admit a lot of that is pure selfishness on my part: I love my friend and family and I don't want to leave them to a totalitarian theofascist republic just because I can't stand it's politics.

Just remember that without slavery there would've been no abolition.  Without the Gilded Age there would be no organized labor.  Without the Great Depression there would be no New Deal.  Without Jim Crow there would be no Civil Rights movements.  Would I have preferred that everything went right from the get go?  You damn right I do!  I don't think there are many on here who share the same view!  We all wish America was some super duper happy hippie paradise where everyone had healthcare, greedy corporations weren't paying out starvation wages, and stable employment is becoming a thing of the past!  But do not let the situation of the present make you depressed and put you down when the Undiscovered Country of the future is still ahead!  It is up to you to ultimately guide your future.

[/a fellow Left American]

[Antonio the Sixth]

Fascism is a centrist ... ideology

Wow, that is one of the most hilarious things that I've ever heard.

Let me clarify, Fascism is an economically centrist ideology.

So a prohibition on independent labor unions, banning strikes, and returning nationalized industry to its former owners in the private sector is 'centrist' ideology? This is one of the biggest issues I have with anarchists and libertarians - you have no understanding of the class forces behind a particular ideological position. Fascism is what happens when the left fails. That's why it looks like a mirror image of the left in spite of being its opposite.

Are there left-leaning fascist groups? Yes, there are. Strasserites are left-wing...compared to the run of the mill Hitlerite. This does not mean that the Strasserite is a left-winger. The left has always been defined politically by a belief in rationality as the guiding force in public policy, secularism, and opposition to tradition. Fascism and National Socialism embrace emotionalist politics, often blend the supernatural with the real, and are staunch traditionalists. How on earth anyone can accuse people who literally believe that a cabal of Jewish bankers are the ones really running the world, who want to keep women in the kitchen, who believe in genetic differences among the races, and who reject the equality of all as left-wing?

[Antonio the Sixth]

RIP this thread.

[Antonio the Sixth]

This divides men (I guess women have no personalities or live in some alternate realm of completely different personalities) into 4 basic categories. Narcissistic psychos who are perfect, failures who are still trying, failures who have given up and then people who care about nothing.

Plus the "negative" versions of these types, but they're obviously just part of the scam aspect. There is no room for alternate goals in life, no room for actually being a normal, relatively successful person who is decently satisfied with their life.

And then the scammy scientology descriptions - buy my book and you can upgrade to Gamma+!

I'm not perfect, not even if narrowly defined as American Psycho. Nor is my dream to be a mindless follower fawning over such a person. And I'm also not ridiculous enough to think I'm some liberated philosopher, independent of the rest of humanity. And thankfully I don't spend my time collecting stamps in my mother's basement either.

What's sad though is that real people fall for this kind of BS and damage their lives over it.

[Antonio the Sixth]

My immigration stance?

You must be logged in to read this quote.

My ancestors were accepted into this country as refugees fleeing vicious pogroms in Russia. Why would I ever abandon that most American of ideals, that this is a country that anyone can come to to build a new life?

[Antonio the Sixth]

Go away.

[Antonio the Sixth]

This is an odd question, but gives a good excuse for a little historical ramble.

Historically 'social democrat' denoted a socialist who believed in participating in parliamentary politics while also advocating for universal suffrage. It was particularly associated with the various Marxist parties who modeled themselves on the SPD, which is why we have the little historical irony of the future CPSU being founded as the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. In countries where the dominant socialist movement had a more indigenous character and was therefore not Marxist in orientation, the term was generally interchangeable with Marxist.¹

The dominant tendency in Marxism at this stage, incidentally, was the rather dogmatic Orthodox Marxism of Karl Kautsky, an ideological current that has no heirs. Orthodox Marxist's believed in History as a force; that events would inevitably conspire to produce the final victory of the workers movement, and that the role of socialist parties was to work towards the day that the Messiah came back prepare the ground for the imminent transformation of society. If you want to know why the often numerically superior and at times notably more popular Mensheviks never exploited their advantages over the Bolshevik cult, this is why. History turned out quite differently, and the two dominant strands in socialism ended up being the two principle opposition currents to Orthodox Marxism: the Revisionism of Eduard Bernstein (which was founded on the fairly logical principle that as History is plainly not unfolding as it ought to, why don't we focus our attention instead on practical reforms to improve the lives of our supporters?) and the tendency that eventually became known as Communism (founded on the logical but somewhat psychotic principle that as History is plainly not unfolding as it ought to, why don't we force the little fycker to do what it ought to fycking do?). Almost all Marxist parties split between the two tendencies,² and the term Social Democrat became associated entirely with the former as it was abandoned by the latter in favour of the new/old term Communist.

Which is where things get a little confusing, because as now there was little difference in practice between the Revisionist parties and non-Marxist socialist parties such as the Labour Party or the ALP, it became common (but only in Left Intelligentsia circles and only rarely in those countries without a strong Marxist tradition) to describe all non-revolutionary socialist parties (whatever their origins) as Social Democratic.

And things get even more confusing in the Post War decades, because in those countries without a Marxist tradition (which often happened to be English speaking countries), some people on the right-wing of their respective socialist parties started to refer to themselves as 'Social Democrats' as a way of distinguishing themselves ideologically from their more left-leaning comrades. Though something of an end was brought to this when part of the right-wing of the Labour Party broke away to form the (short lived) Social Democratic Party in the early 1980s.

And things get even more confusion, because (alas) academia discovered the word and threw it around like confetti from the 1970s onwards to refer to all kinds of different things (c.f. the supposed 'social democratic consensus' in Post War Britain). Worse still: the term was discovered by American academics, and as we all know most Americans are deeply weird on the subject of socialism and act as those the terms associated with it are magic words with all sorts of deep and significant mystical meanings. Americans badly need to be converted en masse to nominalism in my never knowingly humble opinion.

All of which leaves us in a state of considerable confusion, but I would argue that if the term has any utility, it is to denote traditional parties of the non-Communist Left and the members and supporters of such parties. Although, given all of the above, it's hardly a perfect term: there are certain members of the Labour Party who would likely respond to being described as 'social democrats' with physical violence. As to who is or is not a socialist, the difficulty you'll find there is that 'socialism' has no clear definition (or at least there is not now and never has been a clear definition of 'socialism' that all self-described socialists would agree with), and given the history of the word (in terms of widespread use it suddenly appeared in the early 19th century as a label applied to a wide range of political radicalisms, some of which were not particularly new) can never have one, except in very general terms. I wouldn't quite go so far as to argue that everyone who believes that they are a socialist is one, but such a claim would not be all that wide of the mark. Although if you'd rather be very American about this and just go with whatever nonsense Merriam-Webster claims, then I doubt I can do anything to stop you.

<sub>1. I.e. this was the case in both Britain (dominated by an already venerable tradition of trade unionism and heavily influenced by Nonconformist Protestantism and - in some areas - Catholicism) and Russia (dominated by the frankly nihilistic Socialist Revolutionaries). Not that the respective non-Marxist socialist traditions in either country had much (or frankly anything) in common with each other.
2. The remaining Orthodox Marxists were typically subsumed into the ranks of the Revisionists, though not always without drama. In some parties they - rather than the Revisionists - remained the dominant faction, which was usually terrible news for the party in question. But what is notable is that they very rarely fell in with the Communists.</sub>

[Antonio the Sixth]

An utterly pathetic individual, and a phony to boot. He can talk the revolutionary talk all he wants, but when it comes down to it, tweed is nothing but a trust fund baby masquerading as some kind of radical while in reality being little more than a predator willing to take advantage of people for personal gain. I don't know what to 'believe' about tweed other than that he's a deeply cynical, pathetic person who would take advantage of another person for his own amusement, which is more or less the marker of someone who shouldn't have the privilege of being a member of this community.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Moderators should certainly be active posters, but I agree with Alcon that it is an important strength of the moderation team that they are specifically not part of the social community of this forum for the most part. Being a mod should have a certain distance from the stupidity and cliquishness that pervades certain parts of Atlas' community. Being well liked is not, and should not, be a job requirement. If the job was all about pleasing people, nothing would ever get done.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I'm going to attempt to kill with silence the (repulsive) article that Marokai linked to and explain what I mean about the Hitler thing. Understatement isn't always a bad thing--famously it's key to some forms of comedy, to name the most obvious example--but when it's deployed with the kind of glurgy earnestness that it was in this case, it's hard not to suspect that this person is minimizing Hitler's atrocities by talking about them in the same terms as obviously much more minor problems. Furthermore it's hard not to come to the conclusion that a discourse of oppression entirely centered around concepts like 'privilege' is completely insufficient to discuss much of anything seriously and implicitly encourages this kind of vapid thinking. This is a generation of activists who can be confronted with the example of a regime that killed millions and millions and millions of people and without a hint of irony describe the man at the center of it as having 'believed in privilege'. The profound lack of historical awareness (and awareness that a difference in degree can be so enormous as to become a difference in kind) inherent in a statement like that doesn't come from nowhere. Personally I think that the quote in DC Al Fine's signature, despite its unfortunate source, has it more or less right: It comes from a pathological desire to avoid anything smacking too much of a serious belief system--a belief system like Judaism or Christianity or Marxism that provides some of the language with which these sorts of things were traditionally discussed and through which they were traditionally understood--in favor of a constant reaffirmation of not being that [small-c] 'conservative', not being that 'old-fashioned', not being that 'boring'. 'Don't trust any episteme over thirty', dontcha know.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I would have used a more strongly-worded language, but this still nails the point:

Is increased vote turnout nmeven a good thing? Generally people who dont vote would be less likely to even be aware of the issues, so why is it good if they do vote?

Well that's not really the point of a democratic election. Most voters, whatever the turnout are not "wonks" (thank god). They won't be able to give a concise description of the latest tax reform proposals or whatever. But the point of representative democracy is to convert the gut feelings, the raw emotion of a populace into tangible action by the people they chose to elect. Sure most people who don't vote (as well as most people who vote) are not Economics majors or even know much about politics; but they do understand their own lives. They know if taxes are too grinding; and they know if their neighbourhood is poorly organised; and they know if their boss treats them like crap. That is why we should raise turnout - because at the end of the da, no matter how little Vox articles a person has read, they deserve agency.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Crabcake is on a roll:

I don't really grasp Cassius's point to be honest. Humanity is a sentimental beast, and almost all social reformers throughout history have used the image of the poor dead, destitute or dying child as a symbol for their cause - the Victorian middle-classes of course being a prime example for almost sickly depictions of the innocent child being destroyed by the wickedness of social ills (Dickens being the master of course). We don't like children dying or losing their innocence; and the idea of a photo of a drowned child not plucking our heartstrings seems baffling. After all, the public opinion before the photo was decidedly negative towards the refugees; so people almost want to atone for their own failings. (Just like Victorian philanprophists fell over themselves to "give back to society" once they were sufficiently shamed by Tiny Tim being a mawkish fool). A dead child can only represent a victim, and we are emphatic enough to link the face of the dead boy with the own children we have in our families. Is such a reaction a bad thing? Maybe it's hypocritical (and a bit bandwagonish) but I find it comforting, that even in these uncertain times people still have not lost that emphatic touch. Maybe when we are all automatons we will be able to freely gaze on the death of children and think "well that's sad and all, but part of the real world". But we aren't at that point in society yet, and (apologies to disagree with Cassius) I will be very sad when that day comes.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I tend to harp on this point, but it's for a reason.  In 2009, Senator Grassley refused to vote for the stimulus package even though he said he agreed with 90% of the bill.  Once the establishment GOP takes that kind of posture in governing, it's a little hard to turn around and tell caucuses like the FC that they should compromise for the good of the party.  The establishment GOP made its electoral deal with the devil in order to mount a viable resurgence in 2009-2010, and they got their wish.  Now comes the piper--actually, the piper has showed up quite a few times already.  Leadership doesn't just mean being in power all the time; it sometimes, when one is not in power, requires one to make a choice about whether one will be loyal opposition or sheer opposition, and the standards of that culture, once established, will seep through everything.