On "reaching across the aisle"

[lumberjack_jeff]

I'm in the process of reading Shock Doctrine. It is the most courageous book I've ever read.

An excerpt

As a means of extracting information during interrogations, torture is notoriously unreliable, but as a means of terrorizing and controlling populations, nothing is quite as effective. It was for this reason that, in the fifties and sixties, many Algerians grew impatient with French liberals who expressed their moral outrage over news that their soldiers were electrocuting and water-boarding liberation fighters - and yet did nothing to end the occupation that was the reason for these abuses.
In 1962, Gisele Halimi, a French lawyer for several Algerians who had been brutally raped and tortured in prison, wrote in exasperation, "The words were the same stale cliches: ever since torture had been used in Algeria there had always been the same words, the same expression of indignation, the same signatures to public protests, the same promises. This automatic routine had not abolished one set of electrodes or water-hoses; nor had it in any remotely effective way curbed the power of those who used them." Simone de Beauvoir, writing on the same subject, concurred: "To protest in the name of morality against 'excesses' or 'abuses' is an error which hints at active complicity. There are no 'abuses' or 'excesses' here, simply an all-pervasive system.
Her point was that the occupation could not be done humanely; there is no humane way to rule people against their will. There are two choices, Beauvoir wrote: accept occupation and all the methods required for its enforcement, "or else you reject, not merely certain specific practices, but the greater aim which sanctions them, and for which they are essential." The same stark choice is available in Iraq and Israel/Palestine today, and it was the only option in the Southern Cone (Argentina/Chile) in the seventies. Just as there is no kind, gentle way to occupy people against their determined will, ther eis no peaceful way to take away form millions of citizens what they need to live with dignity - which is what the Chicago Boys (Milton Freidman's students) were determined to do. Robbery, whether of land or a way of life, requires force or at least its credible threat; it's why thieves carry guns, and often use them. Torture is sickening, but it is often a highly rational way to achieve a specific goal; indeed, it may be the only way to achieve those goals. Which raises the deeper question, one that so many were incapable of asking at the time in Latin America. Is (economic free-market) neoliberalism an inherently violent ideology, and is there something about its goals that demands this cycle of brutal political cleansing, followed by human rights cleanup operations?

This is the ideology we're up against. I find appeals to reach across the aisle uncompelling. I am unmotivated to seek middle ground between authoritarianism and democracy.

The conservative movement is a bulldozer attempting to duplicate here what it 'accomplished' in Argentina and Chile. It will not be turned by half measures, compromise and bipartisanship.

Due to overreaching and the ridiculousness of the person driving it, the bulldozer has temporarily run out of fuel. We are in a unique position today to dismantle this bulldozer where it sits. I don't expect that either of our presidential candidates are inclined to do this, but we can still support congressional candidates who are able and inclined to give as good as they get.

We are at a tipping point in history. If we don't provide enough effort to tip the scales back to the new deal and human and civil rights now, the next disaster/attack/reichstag fire will be civilizations undoing. The Freidmanesque pattern is to have big plans ready (e.g. Social security privatization) to implement when opportunity, in the form of catastrophe, strikes.

Civilization will lose if people of goodwill are always playing defense.

It occurs to me that it's hard to avoid the conclusion that the crashing of the dollar is intentional, and that the stagflation which it has created will create another opportunity for disaster capitalism to implement its dystopian vision.

Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

[Recursion]

1. You say that and then quote Goldwater?

That's odd.

I liked the Shock Doctrine, but I disagree with what you're saying, or more to the point I think you're misinterpreting the calls to reach across the aisle. The point is to show Americans that progressive values and the values of self-identified conservatives are consonant on a great many issues (fiscal responsibility, health care, peace, justice, etc.)

[lumberjack_jeff]

3. Intentionally.

The father of conservatism defined the rules of the game 40 years ago. It's time we internalized the rule book.

[bluerum]

2. And don't think that they won't torture you after they have pulled you into

their prisons with the hands that you reach out to them with.

[lumberjack_jeff]

4. It is my view that the ideology is unfit to be compromised with. n/t

[bluerum]

6. Couln't agree more.

[bain_sidhe]

5. and there it is...

IMHO, this "fear" is precisely the point of the torture--and the coverage of it. "Shut up, go along, submit, or you, too, can be tortured."

[lumberjack_jeff]

7. We consider authoritarianism foolish at our peril.

After reading the book and watching the barely concealed fear in the words of Bernanke, I am not at all confident that we'll avoid a similar fate to those hapless folks in Argentina and Chile - by design. It's hard not to conclude that, when you stimulate the economy by giving it more of what's poisoning it (debt) in a way that is designed to provide the least possible benefit, that it's anything other than arson.

Authoritarianism works. It may be evil, but it's not stupid. You can't talk sense to them because they do not lack knowledge, they lack ethics.

[Seabiscuit]

8. Nancy Pelosi tripped over herself saying "bipartisanship" at every opportunity once

she learned she would become Speaker of the House. Look at where that got her. And look at what she's done since then. And not done. She's not just a phony. She's a complete disgrace.

Anyone who doesn't understand that "bipartisanship" and "reaching across the aisle" is dead as a doornail has had their heads in the sand for the past 8 years.

This is a war, folks. A war the Repukes have been waging against the rule of law, the Constitution, the Democrats, the middle class, the poor, civil rights, women's rights, and the American people for decades, culminating in the past 8 years of stunning insanity. They do NOT compromise. About anything. It's about time Dems grew a spine and fought back.

[lumberjack_jeff]

9. No one respects a person who lacks principles.

One who is willing to sacrifice their principles so quickly, doesn't have any.

Obama has articulated very little policy for this simple reason. He doesn't want to be anything other than a blank screen onto which people can project their own principles.

"Except for the Columbia/Harvard education, he's just like me! I have hope too! Yes! We! Can! Yaay!

...Uh, where's my pony?"