Morning in America, and there's a homeless man on my doorstep

Discussion in 'Off-Topic Discussions' started by Tom57, Jun 10, 2004.

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  1. Mr. Engineer

    Mr. Engineer member

    I think Dubya needs more praying. He needs to pray that his daddy will be able to find him another job after he loses this one.

    You failed to cite a source so I must assume that Clinton wanting to speak was merely your own opinion. (please don't source the Faux News Network as it is about as unreliable and unbiased as a political debate when it comes to truthfulness)
     
  2. Mr. Engineer

    Mr. Engineer member

    Another baseless opinion, thank you.
     
  3. Bruce

    Bruce Moderator

    Rather than Bush needing a new job, Kerry will need a new source of money, a.k.a. a new wife, since Theresa has 750 million reasons to not stay with a loser.

    Translation: Fox News tells the truth.
     
  4. uncle janko

    uncle janko member

    Oh. Now I get it. Anyone who disagrees with you is simply offering a baseless opinion. Wow, my chuckwallas, epistemological lightning hath struck.

    What, Mr Engineer, do you know about watching audience reactions for a living for a quarter century? What do you know about observing persons with sleep disorders over a sustained period of time? Maybe you know a lot, or maybe not. But I know what I know and it has precisely zip (a-dee-doo-dah) to do with my opinion of President and Senator Clinton, and a lot to do with homiletical training and professional experience.

    I wouldn't talk about "hate and distain" (sic) if I wuz yew.
     
  5. decimon

    decimon Well-Known Member

    So much for "come to Jesus" meetings. :)
     
  6. uncle janko

    uncle janko member

    Hi Decimon: in my religion we don't believe in or countenance " 'come to Jesus' meetings." We reject revivalism and "appeals" as heresy. :D
     
  7. Mr. Engineer

    Mr. Engineer member

    Yeah, right - OK. You can tell that from a single shot. I guess you are pretty good...
     
  8. Orson

    Orson New Member

    As the Brusce Hornsby 80s song went, "That's Just The Way It Is" - and we have in Tom's paraphrase of 80s criticism a time-capsule.

    Unfortunately, the time-capsule is woefully incomplete. To begin with, it forgets the "success" of the Carter years - the stagflation, inculcation of noble suffering, realism of the "misery index" - ie the combined consequence of unemployment and inflation - and who worry's about that now?

    As political scientist Aaron Wildavsky showed (among others), the homelessness of the 80s was a media creation backed by zero social science. (I forget the shill for this fititious cause - Mitch something - he died in the 90s.) The media gave it full faith and cred because it attacked Reagan. That's the simple truth.

    the bottom line is that in the 80s Japanese economic competition seemed unstopable: remember the movies and books of the time? They informed Robert Reich's policies in the early 90s: let's imitate the Germans and Japs and adopt indicative planning - basically more fascism, not less! The fact is that the economic restructuring made possible by the much hated 80s made 90s prosperity possible (much enhanced, thankfully, by the stalemate between Clinton and a once newly Republican Congress). Reagan restored the US to the front rank of nations in economic competitiveness and productivity. Remember Paul Kennedy's best seller "Rise and Fall of Great Powers?" There was a cottage industry led by marxists promoting the view of the inevitable decline of Imperial powers. It flourished until its incredulity finally marginalized its proponents (who are still out there, the the bye).

    Tom's bait is for those susceptable to guilt-mongering. There's a book out on this topic worth reading, but the point is that souls lacking in self-worth seek their redemption through promoting guilt in others and exploiting it to their own ends. No individual has a right to exist alone; we're all communists now!

    SEE what a great path for success THAT was? The Left can't even confront the fact of its own falsification. That's "integrity" - that's "honesty" for ya. Now can the Left face the reality that more of humanity if freer than ever in history. The "Progressivism" of the left is now made obsolete by the triumph of competitive individualism, competitive domocracy, and private property.

    Today the US deserves a genuinely New Left! An intellectually honest one. And since we aren't getting it (a flawed Christopher Hitchens nonwithstanding), righteous Americans must endure their fatuities and flatuence - perhaps for a very long time to come.

    --Orson
     
  9. Tom57

    Tom57 Member

    Re: Re: Morning in America, and there's a homeless man on my doorstep

    In Orson’s post we have the Cliff’s Notes version of Reagan’s outlook and legacy.

    Homelessness as a media creation? Clearly you have not ventured out for a dozen years or more. Or like many of the homeless, you have neglected your medications for too long. Perhaps you should take a double dose and emerge from your Reaganomic induced miasma. Homelessness is on the front burner in every major city in this country. Just this week the SF Chronicle has been running a series on the relative successes in New York and Philadelphia in dealing with the homeless. It is perhaps THE issue in San Francisco politics at the moment.

    Ah, but perhaps you are also subscribing to the conservative twaddle theories that the Holocaust or AIDS don’t really exist either. They are fabrications with the sole purpose of making YOU feel guilty. One wonders if there could be a more pointless and ineffectual goal. If liberals, as you say, attempt to impose guilt, the conservatives attempt to disclaim the same by pretending manifest problems don’t exist, or that they are a fabrication of the liberal media.

    You write, “Tom's bait is for those susceptible to guilt-mongering. There's a book out on this topic worth reading, but the point is that souls lacking in self-worth seek their redemption through promoting guilt in others and exploiting it to their own ends. No individual has a right to exist alone; we're all communists now!”

    We may now equate sensitivity with a lack of self worth. Clearly you are not susceptable to guilt-mongering, though you might be prone to other pathologies that deserve attention. God forbid that you should be made to feel guilty or, worse yet, that you are a part of something bigger other than the wholesale, individual conservative quest for wealth. And you assert that if we can’t exist as individuals, then we must be Communists! Your outlook is positively breathtaking, though unadulterated nonsense. Heaven help us if some pesky minorities or, still worse, dubious characters with a perplexing virus and strange sex habits get in your way and make your life a weensy bit uncomfortable. As noted above, the solution, by God, is to pretend they don’t exist, and to accuse those who acknowledge their existence as fear and guilt mongers.

    Nonetheless, you have provided, unwittingly perhaps, a beautiful capsule of Reagan’s outlook on the world. It is a shining city on the hill for those who live on the hill, though perhaps less so, for those who live in the flatlands, and for whom the sun is eclipsed by matters of life and death. I used to think it was just Reagan’s own impenetrable fog that perpetuated his own ignorance. Now I see it was contagious, and for that you have my full sympathy.
     

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