[extropy-chat] The NeoCon Mind-Trick (wasletterconcerningpresidential growth)

The Avantguardian avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com
Sun Dec 18 10:22:36 UTC 2005



--- Brett Paatsch <bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au> wrote:

> No Stu, in my opinion, that's too much conspiracy
> theory, 
> so is Jeff Davis's views. Things haven't gotten
> quite to that
> stage yet. There is a lot more keystone cops stuff
> going
> on. 

I am not talking about a secret cabal here. I am
talking about the people writing the fat checks that
gave Bush and Kerry their multimillion dollar campaign
funds. The Waltons come to mind.

> 
> I don't want to waste time praising Kerry, people
> might
> mistake me for a Democrat hack, but his position was
> different to Bush's. 

So he said. When he started out his position was
completely inscrutable. Then when he was pressed to
actually state his position, he was vague. When his
position was criticized, he changed it. What was his
position again? Oh yeah, different than Bush's. ;) 

> > The primaries serve to weed out all the candidates
> that 
> > the elite don't approve of until you get two
> "safe" candidates
> > that will serve their masters well.
> 
> Stu, this looks like speculation on your part. Can
> you show
> real evidence for it?

The closest thing I have to evidence of this was the
media's character assassination of Howard Dean. The
guy ran a grassroots campaign where he raised money
from millions of small contributers by innovative use
of the Internet so he would really have been a
"people's candidate". He was a centrist that served
something like 6 terms as governor of Vermont where he
balanced their budget and lowered their taxes, earning
a reputation as a social liberal and a fiscal
conservative. 

He is a physician of all things which would have been
an historic first for the U.S. Can you imagine a
president that had sworn the Hippocratic oath to "do
no harm?" And he had a lot of good ideas for things
ranging from health care reform and education. He was
also staunchly against the war in Iraq. 

In short I thought he would have made a great
President. Unfortunately, during a speech in the Iowa
Caucus (one of those pecularities of American
politics, I never quite understood was why every state
can't have their primaries on the same day, unless it
is to give the media a chance to influence the
outcomes of the primaries in the rest of the nation),
he gave a speech to very loudly cheering crown wherein
he had to shout to be heard over the crowd and at one
point he screamed as he ran out of breath. Out of his
20 minute long speech in which he had many good things
to say, the news channels edited out the cheering
crowd and played only the 10 seconds of him screaming,
apparently to a very quiet audience. They played it
some 644 times in the next four days, until Dean
became the butt of jokes on Letterman and the Tonight
Show.

The media made the most electable democratic candidate
that year out to be a raving lunatic and thus died
grassroots politics in the U.S. A good entry on his
life and career can be read at wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Dean

>  I think both you and Jeff Davis are
> going too far into speculative conspiracy-theory, I
> think you are both overestimating how much
individuals of high
> personal wealth can influence things, at present,
> but I could
> be wrong, and I am certain that the direction we are
> headed
> is in the direction you and Jeff fear. 

Talk like that worries me even more. If you can see
the ruinous trajectory that I think we are on and our
only disagreement is how far along that trajectory we
are, then we have a problem, Houston.  Intelligent
minds are good at seeing patterns. Yeah, sometimes
those patterns are not really there. But sometimes
they are. It could all be a string of unfortunate
coincidences, but talk about unlucky. Why the
democrats would select a corpse in a suit to run
against Bush instead of a young vibrant idealist with
real intelligence, skills, and integrity is beyond me.
 


> And that is not a good direction even for the high
> wealth
> individuals. They lose if they go that direction.   

Not necessarily. If the U.S. economy collapses, they
still have their Swiss bank accounts and gold boullion
to fall back on. They can just flee the country. They
are the jet-set after all.

> > After all the President can't authorize the use
> > of cruise missiles against Americans . . . or can
> he?

> Not legally, no. Not to my knowledge but accidents
> happen and the general trend is not good. 

On that note, were you aware of this?
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/US/12/08/airplane.gunshot/
No arrest, no trial, only summary execution for
running off of an airplane. If Thomas Jefferson wasn't
already dead, this would have killed him.

> As the absurd unwinnable war on terror fiasco drags
> on and real people with real grievances decide to
> act
> violently and with no more respect for the rule of
> law
> than was shown them you will see increasing
> desperation
> from governments who are perhaps only now beginning
> to understand what they have unleashed. 

I agree. To wage war on a vague and insubstantial
bogeyman is to contrive an excuse to wage perpetual
war against targets of opportunity. There is no
objective in this war, the war itself is the
objective. And with it comes emergency powers for the
government and lucrative defense contracts for the
privilaged few at the expense of any true hope of
freedom, security, or peace.


The Avantguardian 
is 
Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. . ."

- Albert Einstein, "What I Believe" (1930)

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