Krauthammer: on Obama’s internationalism
We’ve been so focused on Obama’s domestic decisions and their terrible effects that it’s easy to forget how bad his foreign policy has been. But Charles Krauthammer is determined to make us remember what he refers to as “the depths of Obama’s naé¯ve universalism.”
I viewed the video of the speech last week. It takes almost an hour to watch it to completion if anyone is interested. Here it is.
http://www.heritage.org/press/events/ev011910b.cfm
Krauthammer is always worth reading and this piece is worth downloading as a pdf, printing out, and reading at liesure.
Obama is worrisome in so many ways but in foreign policy I suspect that there is some terrible shoe waiting to drop.
Jackson Diehl in today’s WaPo says that Obama is withdrawing from foreign policy. People are starting to notice.
Obama thought all this stuff was so easy. He had no idea of the factors that affect other countries’ actions, including interior pressures from other parties. Right now we have the EU stopping cooperation on SWIFT because of pressure from civil liberties groups. We have the economic disaster of Greece that Germany may have to pay for in order to preserve the EU dream. We have the German leftist pacifists wanting withdrawal now from Afghanistan. We have a German CDU (Merkel’s party) bucking the coalition agreement on extending the lifetime of atomic power plants, which does grant Germany a little space from total dependency on Russian gas. But I’m sure Obama will take heart from the fact that the EU bureaucrats decided today (not without some ongoing criticism) on a common symbol to be used for identifying organic food products (without Gentechnik). Three dimensions aren’t enough to describe this little chess game, and I haven’t added Asia or Latin America to the mix.
Sorry, I forgot Environment Minister in the line about power plants. But then I also didn’t menton Iran.
currently finishing up
Bruno Jasienski’s
I Burn Paris & the Plague of Proletarian Internationalism (1929)
mostly cause most have no idea of whats going on, and so its better to go back to the sources. that puts krauthhammers references in proper context not context of where we plaster in cracks with whatever we think makes them whole (without any effort, memory, etc)
The intellectual rigour of Marxism proved to be far inferior to its emotive power. The great majority who came to believe that Marx had provided a scientific basis for their dreams of social justice never gave a moment’s critical thought to his writings. Marx had unwittingly provided them with yet another substitute religion.
that was 1929
its now 2010
we still are arguing what was settled and known then and since twisted. today, you have lots that think they are clever by tying marxism to religion.
and the others who read them think thats clever too. but they had never read these sources.
you can see the same bs in dawkins.
as his book made sure not to introduce you to the even greater minds that answered the same questions for the opposing side to dawkins, and in a way that dawkinsn could only appear smart if they didnt exist (or what they said was forgotten)
so its a game of playing the ignorant
and sociopaths and others find it easy to dislike and lose sympathy for those whom life tells them are not good surviving creatures for allowing it.
[ie, the gullible are not future material]
Slavoj Žižek, A Plea for Leninist Intolerance
“Significantly, however, one figure was never rehabilitated, excluded by the communists as well as by the anticommunist Russian nationalists: Trotsky, the “wandering Jew” of the Revolution, the true anti-Stalin, the archenemy, opposing “permanent revolution” to the idea of building socialism in one country.
One is tempted to risk here the parallel with Freud’s distinction between primordial (founding) and secondary repression in the unconscious;
for Trotsky’s exclusion amounted to something like the primordial repression of the Soviet state, to something that cannot ever be readmitted through “rehabilitation,” since the entire order relied on this negative gesture of exclusion.
(It is fashionable to claim that the irony of Stalin’s politics from 1928 onwards was that it effectively was a kind of permanent revolution, a permanent state of emergency in which revolution repeatedly devoured its own children.
However, this claim is misleading, because the Stalinist terror is the paradoxical result of the attempt to stabilize the Soviet Union into a state like any other, with firm boundaries and institutions; terror was a gesture of panic, a defense reaction against the threat to this state stability.)
So Trotsky is the one for whom there is a place neither in the pre-1990 nor in the post-1990 capitalist universe in which even the Communist nostalgics don’t know what to do with Trotsky’s permanent revolution.
Perhaps the signifier Trotsky is the most appropriate designation of that which is worth redeeming in the Leninist legacy.”
the point is as i have said from the begining.
that the outcome is not part of the plan, and so there is no part of the plan to prevent it. like the stamford experiment, the outcome is the result of setting up the forces and goals in the way they set them up, and from the way they expediently manipulated to get to a place, and whose manipulations never thoght of what to do AFTER that.
like the dog that chases a car, he doesnt know what to do with it when they get it, and there is no struggle. (which is why trotsky said basically. for the sake of reason, get the car to drive in circles permanently so that one never actually catches it and this part we are so successful in, remains static)
i said to read george kennan, he lays out that this is the key problem. the ideology is completely about achieving control bu games to wrest it away from others who are nicer!!! but it doesnt tell them how to govern well, just how to manipulate to personal ends, which becomes, for the new lords and ladies, governance.
so like french despotism of the feudal state, they create the same malaise in which there is no answer as to who is the state. l’stat ce mois becomes the only answer to the alternative of l’state nous sommes, the other answer of which we already have what they promise to construct.
R.J. Rummel’s definition of democide:
As an analogous concept for public murder, that by government agents acting authoritatively, I offer the concept of democide. Its one root is the Greek dTmos, or people; the other is the same as for genocide, which is from the Latin caedere, to kill. Democide’s necessary and sufficient meaning is that of the intentional government killing of an unarmed person or people. Unlike the concept of genocide, it is restricted to intentional killing, and does not extend to attempts to eliminate cultures, races, or a people by means other than killing people. Moreover, democide is not limited to the killing component of genocide, nor to politicide, mass murder or massacre, or terror. It includes them all and also what they exclude, as long as such killing is a purposive act, policy, process, or institution of government.
read here and see how those in england, and the US, who were sympathetic to russian communism (and who never were outed for it)… assisted the fall of white poland to stalin and hitler
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish-Soviet_War#Diplomatic_Front.2C_Part_2:_The_political_games
In July 1920, Britain announced it would send huge quantities of World War One surplus military supplies to Poland, but a threatened general strike by the Trades Union Congress, who objected to British support of “White Poland”, ensured that none of the weapons destined for Poland went any further than British ports.
the UNION striked
and the poles were left wthout weapons
and hitler and stalin had this as part of their reasoning.
On August 6, 1920, the British Labour Party published a pamphlet stating that British workers would never take part in the war as Poland’s allies, and labour unions blocked supplies to the British expeditionary force assisting Russian Whites in Arkhangelsk. French Socialists, in their newspaper L’Humanité, declared: “Not a man, not a sou, not a shell for reactionary and capitalist Poland. Long live the Russian Revolution! Long live the Workmen’s International!” Poland suffered setbacks due to sabotage and delays in deliveries of war supplies, when workers in Austria, Czechoslovakia and Germany refused to transit such materials to Poland.
so as i also said.
we are not alone in this.
to read jaseirnskis work you see him go from poland is the victim of bolshivik haoards, to the same trope they are now trying to sell and that it was poland who attacked germany and russia!
[go ahead, check it out]
the point i keep trying to make is that what you all think is new, different, etc. is not a product of new… but a product of hiding it from you and taking it out again and calling it fresh to those too ignorant to know, too lazy to look, too self confident to recuse themselves, and too full of themselves to accept the one down place as student
those same qualities are needed to elect someone like those people.
these people are not abberations…
they are their heroes
JasieÅ„ski’s treacherous tendencies had been amply demonstrated during that war:
When the Red Army advanced on Poland, Bruno enlisted as a volunteer in the Polish army. He spent three years in the army, but it is hard to say he was very active in the defence of his homeland. He organized poetry evenings in the barracks during which he read works that… sang the praises of the invader. He was arrested for this (and was lucky that he was not shot for ideological subversion) and spent two years behind bars, which amounted to half his service in the army. [3]
today such is normalized so you can get instructions from nickelodeon.
From the perspective of proletarian internationalism, to fight for a bourgeois nation against the Red Army was to betray your own class. The Bolshevik narrative painted Poland as an ally of the Whites, as an expansionist, land-grabbing nation led by the landowning class. Most importantly, Poland could serve as a bridge via which the revolution in backward Russia could be exported to advanced Germany, which, in the view of the Bolshevik leadership, was ripe for revolution. The Red Army’s total defeat in 1920 on the outskirts of Warsaw meant that Poland actually turned out to be an obstacle stopping the spread of revolution, rather than a bridge.
and so came the solution…
of course if your raised on Zinn, this is not in your lessons. it would be a bit inconvenient to creating the right mind and attitude. otherwise you might not defend their ideals and things by you ractions believing your doing the opposite!!!
but how would one know?
The revolutionary commune in I Burn Paris is what the Bolshevik leadership had always hoped for: a home-grown revolution in an industrially developed European country that would come to the aid of the Soviet Union and finally bring about the international conflagration prophesied in the Communist Manifesto.
the word holocaust was changed in future texts.
as i said… in 1920, they were planning the holocaust as the solution to the problems of the world. what problems? white man (which is why hitler didnt kill africans, arabs, etc), jews, religion, family, etc.
all other potential seats of power in the targeted NATIONS.. (which is why you can find parallel people in each nation. go ahead look. if history is natural, then how do you get a copy of sanger in the UK, and sanger in germany, and sanger in italy, and sanger in france? different people, different names, and each branded liek a soap distributed to different countries like capitalists sell products!)
In the spine-tingling conclusion of I Burn Paris, as the English fleet heads towards St. Petersburg and Poland prepares to invade the Soviet Union, the Paris Commune drops its cover and begins broadcasting its message to the world:
Paris calling! … Workers! Soldiers! Peasants! The revolutionary government of Paris is speaking to you. Paris, which you considered dead, lives. The rumours you have heard about the raging epidemic are untrue. The epidemic died out two years ago. The only ones saved were a few thousand Parisian proletariat who were thrown into prison during the May repression. On the ruins of old Paris, the proletariat saved thanks to their isolation in prison, has erected a new Paris during these years — a free workers’ commune… the imperial war, provoked by your bourgeois governments against the first worker-peasant state in the world, the Soviet Union… The workers of Paris calling! Workers! Peasants! Subjugated peoples! The war against the USSR is a war against you, it is a war against our commune, which you will defend as a bastion of international revolution in the sea of capitalist Europe. Everyone to arms! Everyone fight for revolutionary Paris!
With such a provocative, utterly uncompromising finale to his story, it is not hard to see why France deported Jasieński, why he was not welcome back in Poland, and why he was welcomed with open arms in the Soviet union.
and
One school of thought (typified by the Mensheviks) explained the Commune’s failure along (what it claimed to be) orthodox Marxist lines: the Commune’s attempt to establish a revolutionary government was premature because it bypassed the stage of bourgeois revolution, which was deemed essential by Marx’s doctrine of dialectical materialism.
The other school (exemplified by Lenin and the Bolsheviks) focused on and drew inspiration from the Commune’s successes: the Commune had not made the mistake of merely reforming the existing bourgeois state and its apparatus, but had set up its own, different state and implemented direct democracy through arming all of the workers, and so was the inspiration for the Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917.
The proletariat, on the other hand, if it wants to uphold the gains of the present revolution and proceed further, to win peace, bread and freedom, must “smash”, to use Marx’s expression, this “ready-made” state machine and substitute a new one for it by merging the police force, the army and the bureaucracy with the entire armed people. Following the path indicated by the experience of the Paris Commune of 1871 and the Russian Revolution of 1905, the proletariat, must organise and arm all the poor, exploited sections of the population in order that they themselves should take the organs of state power directly into their own hands, in order that they themselves should constitute these organs of state power. (Lenin, Third letter from afar).
As well as an inspiration, the Commune also functioned as a warning. According to Bolshevik interpretation, the failure of the Commune lay in its lack of ruthlessness in its dealing with the enemies. Haunted by the Commune’s merciless suppression, the Bolsheviks were at pains to avoid the same fate; hence the ferocity with which Bolshevik terror dealt with those merely suspected of counter-revolution.
and i will bet that only occam may have heard this mans name!!!!!!!!!! Jasieński
After Jasieński announced the death of Polish Futurism in 1924, the Polish Futurists went their separate ways, but the majority of them eventually ended up in the communist camp.
Aleksander Wat explains his own conversion to communism as coming through metaphysical desperation. For him, Futurism led to unbearable nihilism, and communism offered the solace and certainty that comes with religion; Lenin became his ‘idol’ and ‘saviour’. Also, as the Nazi party loomed in Germany and anti-Semitism was on the rise in Poland, it seemed that communism was the only viable alternative.[
fun stuff eh?
JasieÅ„ski ostensibly wrote I Burn Paris in response to Paul Morand’s Je Brule Moscou (I Burn Moscow) (1925), a light, satirical account of the author’s trip to the Soviet Union. There are two elements of Morand’s text which seem to have put JasieÅ„ski’s back up.
anyone read that other book? its interesting too.
Firstly, Morand continually mocks Soviet austerity and the deterioration of living standards since 1917:
The stairs looked the same as all stairs since the nationalisation of property, which means they were last scrubbed in October 1917…
… I was proud of my new hat and lambskin coat; I looked like a NEPman who had done alright for himself. I suggested to my companions that we visit the gypsy district. I was asked to speak more quietly. They kept looking round to make sure we weren’t being followed. They refused my request, explaining that it was late and those streets are dangerous. I insisted on getting a bite to eat — since even when there is food in Russia there is no time to eat it — but the comrade who accompanied us got terribly frightened. The mask of the ardent disciple slipped mask and I saw, reflected in his eyes, genuine executioners. The pure — those belonging to the Templar order — should under no circumstances be seen in a dive with a woman, or in the company of a foreigner; and the censor forbade everything, even the word foxtrot, which in Russia is a synonym for capitalist and Western debauchery…[9]
so the truth of soviet union was known as early as the early 1920s
thats less than 10 years to know
and today, we actually cant make that same certain statement of knowing!!! that in 100 years we went from knowing, to an ignorance after collapse, 60 million tortured to death, experiments on humans, murder as state fact, and on and on
yet we cant make the same clear statement that came in less than 10 years after such.
the harm has been normalized to the point that we love it, and preserve and defend it.
The joke that runs throughout Morand’s story is that everything is being so thoroughly collectivized in Soviet Russia that there is no time or space for bourgeois indulgences such as having sex in private. At the start of the story Morand’s narrator appears to be on course for a night of passion with Vasylissa Abramowna. But once back at her apartment his overtures are continually interrupted by neighbours and a stream of male visitors who are all in love with Vasylissa. Even Lenin manages to intrude:
– What do you think of love?
– I’m not a theoretician. Look it up in Lenin, page one thousand one hundred and twenty-five, tome number nine.
I see that Lenin is Confucius.
– But seriously, if a foreigner falls in love…
The doors open. Nobody enters. Vasylissa answers an invisible person. I hear how they ask for help from influential people. It’s about a passport…
One of Vasylissa’s admirers is a poet, Goldwasser — a thinly-disguised caricature of Mayakovsky:
After returning from Switzerland to Russia in nineteen-seventeen, he started to write propaganda. His poems are printed in different colours, with cut up photographs inside. The regime is indebted to him for agitprop, atheist songs for children, patriotic hymns, odes to soil fertilisation, calligraphy in the form of hammer and sickle, and advertisements for the government’s industrial plants. His verse has mercilessly dressed up the following: songs for the soldiers of the Red Army, the new penal code, food prices, the metric system for peasants and factory regulations. He is dynamic, official and well-off. He is the first Russian who has smiled and does not speak with a lowered voice. Everybody is of the opinion that he has an original style. He works on this. He boxes with words; makes use of ambiguities, everyday expressions, the monologues of madmen, folklore, dialects, peasant sayings, workshop chatter: and all of it shines with voracious erudition.
As Goldwasser, Mayakovsky does not come out at all badly in Morand’s story, but the portrayal seems to have partly provoked JasieÅ„ski into writing a riposte. Maybe seeing his literary hero competing for a married woman’s favours in such an undignified manner, in a frivolous satire of the Soviet Union, proved too much for JasieÅ„ski. Or maybe JasieÅ„ski was looking for a pretext to unleash his plague and taunt the French with the vision of a Soviet style commune in their capital.
so it was to them a Plague..
a Plague that one desired to give…
too long.
but how do i transmit 45 years of lost stuff
that comes before the 45 years of current lost stuff!
and if you want to KNOW it craves a return to the feudal state of slave and masters.
The bourgeoisie did not generate itself, but was rather generated by feudalism:
We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal organisation of agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder.
The bourgeoisie is the most revolutionary class in human history:
The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part… It has been the first to show what man’s activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former Exoduses of nations and crusades… The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground – what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?
The bourgeoisie has created global markets which transcend national boundaries:
The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.
4. Global markets and urbanisation have a progressive, civilizing impact on less developed nations and provinces:
The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.
The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilised ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West.
and so..
they are nto stupid
they just want a return to feudalism!!!!!!!!!
and the smart peope here and elswhere are so twisted up and played with, that they cant even understand that!!!!!!!!!!!!!
no wonder they dont want me to quote history
their gap pastings then fall apart and the cracks are back bigger than ever.
However, along with these global markets, the bourgeoisie has unleashed productive forces which it cannot control:
Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells…
hey! disney knew it! (of course, what do you think the kinds of thing he read growing up? the stuff that was aroudn in 1920s and after)
so the sorcerers apprentice is a marxist thing.
…The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property.
The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.
to them the crisis is progress!!!!!!!!!!!!
got that?
that by inventing new nad not building a confucian society that goes nowhere, but learns to exist perfectly within that static framework.
in that last paragraph is all you need to understadn the luddites, and the left and their world view.
informed by a man who couldnt find a job so that he could buy shoes for a whore!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The bourgeois national state needs the proletariat to fight its wars:
The bourgeoisie finds itself involved in a constant battle. At first with the aristocracy; later on, with those portions of the bourgeoisie itself, whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all times with the bourgeoisie of foreign countries. In all these battles, it sees itself compelled to appeal to the proletariat, to ask for help, and thus, to drag it into the political arena.
7. The proletariat is thus educated by the bourgeoisie and becomes conscious of its shared interests, which are contrary to those of the bourgeoisie:
The bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the proletariat with its own elements of political and general education, in other words, it furnishes the proletariat with weapons for fighting the bourgeoisie. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by the revolutionary combination, due to association.
8. The first stage of the revolution takes the form of internal, national struggles. However, these civil wars only appear to be national: in fact they are part of the international revolution:
Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie.
9. Just as feudalism created the bourgeoisie, the bourgeoisie have created their own successors, the proletariat. International revolution is inevitable:
The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.
end of details
oh well.
bring on the new theories of whats happening.
Artfldgr, you really should consider elaborating once and a while and stop being so laconic.
At least Bob is funny… 🙂
Art:
What was the source of the quote in your 4:40 pm comment?
The first bolded section could have almost been written by Ayn Rand, except for the terminology.
I suspect it might be Marx, though, in which case he should have quit while he was ahead.
Meanwhile back on planet earth: based on Charles the Great observations which are embarrassing obvious to all but the most reality challenged, would anyone care to predict the form of the reaction against Obamism. Jimmy Carter at least championed human rights, Obama has apparently rejected anything but American guilt in his world view and look what happened to Carter. Will the dems force out the lefty loons or will it be the normals who have to go like Lieberman being forced out of the DP in CT? Will the GOP run an inexperienced Palin or does Guiliani have a serious chance? Opinions anyone?
Bob,
If the economy remains as it is, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Mitt get more attention. He can work behind the scenes for new people like Scott Brown as the Reps try to gain congressional seats and state offices this year. If they win and a group of them get behind Romney, it could really dilute the anti-Mormon feelings of the evangelicals. I think individual social issues will take a backseat to overall philosophy and perceived competence next time around, especially if social conservatives feel their ideas are respected and their issues get a hearing.
None of the newcomers has the experience to run for the top, and a primary full of not ready for prime timers could re-divide the party. What we need is an executive who knows how to encourage young talent and move it to work on common goals. We also need someone who appreciates the complexities of foreign policy and who wouldn’t take a David Axelrod as backup on a China trip.
I don’t see Palin in the top spot. It is more likely that she will get some kind of job that gives her a chance to show competence as well as star allure. What she offers now is energy and the ability to keep the base from splintering on pet issues.
Guilliani is too New York to overcome the mistrust of flyover country. I personally would hate to see his straight talk, tough street fighter image suffer from the need to be diplomatic. We need him unmuzzled on the outside.
The big job right now is to take the people away from the desire for one saviour and to offer an alternative of very many competents who will contribute to the marketplace of ideas. Replace top down with many streams running from the bottom up. And yes, water can move uphill if you apply energy.
Great observations, thanks. I hope the philosophy of the last paragraph sinks into the population.
hey rickle
better see hux and find out if i have permission to let you know. i had to leave such things out for space. 🙂
Europe: a history By Norman Davies
http://tinyurl.com/yly7mzj
though i would recomend reading the patriots history of the united states first.
this book is 1365 pages long.
[so my putting up a quote from there, and other places is kind of like summarizing a library in a long paragraph. rather than get credit for boiling down 40 books into a few thousand words of copied text, i get lambasted for not being able to alleviate the ignorance and stupidity of someone who thinks they are important enough to be catered to. eh hux?]
as a modern history text its not bad
but such boosk are never read by such illiterat cargo cult people. after all, the cost of admission to the party is to read large texts.
and if they have a 5th grade reading, then they are really what the current progressive state says are the idiots that do not study, do not improve, and do not have teh capacity to learn by doing so.
so in the absence of reading thse very large texts, its easy for those who HAVE to screw with the hux’s of the world. aand even better, the hux’s ego is such that theyc an never admit to being screwed that way, so they never defend even after they hve been taken and are wrong over and over.
like a gambler guessing the win, they keep playing feeling their next guess is right. when that doesnt happen they hedge and hedge and hedge. without money they can do this their whole lives and never realize they had never really been on the side of an answer, just near where the answers will be.
from amazon:
Here is a masterpiece of historical narrative that stretches from the Ice Age to the Atomic Age, as it tells the story of Europe, East and West. Norman Davies captures it all-the rise and fall of Rome, the sweeping invasions of Alaric and Atilla, the Norman Conquests, the Papal struggles for power, the Renaissance and the Reformation, the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, Europe’s rise to become the powerhouse of the world, and its eclipse in our own century, following two devastating World Wars. This is the first major history of Europe to give equal weight to both East and West, and it shines light on fascinating minority communities, from heretics and lepers to Gypsies, Jews, and Muslims. It also takes an innovative approach, combining traditional narrative with unique features that help bring history alive: 299 time capsules scattered through the narrative capture telling aspects of an era. 12 -snapshots offer a panoramic look at all of Europe at a particular moment in history. Full coverage of Eastern Europe–100 maps and diagrams, 72 black-and-white plates.All told, Davies’’s Europe represents one of the most important and illuminating histories to be published in recent years.
like everythig and anything… the more you read this kind of stuff, the better able you are in seeing the stuff going on. after all, they do coordinate their bs…
read enough and you know the goals and such, and you know that if yuo are to be on their side and play, you not only have to xmit you know them but are also hiding that and playing the game of making the elite peoples accept a fashionable path to an equivalent end.
remember, the enlightenment was opposed by the romantics!!! to be a romantic and call yourself an enlightened person is a contradiction. its being one thing, and mislabeling yourself as something else.
# Bob From Virginia Says:
February 8th, 2010 at 8:44 pm
Artfldgr, you really should consider elaborating once and a while and stop being so laconic.
# Artfldgr Says:
February 8th, 2010 at 8:49 pm
At least Bob is funny… 🙂.
Actually, Artfldgr, you should consider creating your own blog. Many people (especially including myself) have difficulty in writing entire posts that are as heavily populated as your comments.
Good luck! 🙂
–
And that does not mean you can no longer comment here, Artfldgr.
Like me, you can also now and then drop in a mention of what you have blogged. If I have something I want to promote, I can be utterly shameless about doing so; my recent reticence has been from not having much to say at the moment.
I confess to looking at some of your long comments with mixed feeling of OMG!!!, and envy that you can find so much to say.
Sometimes, I’ll start on something, and then bail out because I don’t know where to go next.
You seem not to have that problem.; hence the jealousy.
Seriously, consider blogging.
Best of luck!
–
Artfldgr
recall that Eric Hoffer said that he was a good writer because he could say in 200 words what the average writer could say in 2,000.
No one wants to read through a thousand words to get to a 10 word point. brevity=good writing.
What do you all think of a Mitt Romney-Sarah Palin ticket? I’ve been mulling that one over. I’m uneasy about Palin’s experience (and some of her judgments, such as leaving office early) for her to be in the top spot. But I do see her as an asset, should she be in a position farther down the chain. If not Palin for VP, how about: Jeb Bush? Mike Huckabee?
I can’t see Guiliani getting the nod. The pubbies have 2 groups of shock troops – gun owners and pro-life people. G will alienate the pro-lifers – and the Rs remain the Stupid Party. Call it single issue if you will, but I could never vote for someone pro-choice, nor could a lot of pro-lifers. It’s a non-negotiable.
I voted for Bush based on his pro-2A stance and because I thought that his SC choices would be good. None of the other issues mattered to me — but I disagreed with him on nearly every other point. (NB – this was before I reverted to Catholicism.)
Guns and Life are not ‘social issues’ to me, nor to many others. They are, IMO, the basis of our American society. There are many *related* issues I would consider social issues, and I could live with disagreement on them. One good thing about my perspective – when many conservatives were getting upset about Bush’s policies, I remained calm since I wasn’t overly surprised.
I have blogged.. and even had a large fan base
[who tend to follow me around a bit]
i was published at mens news daily and still am if i want to write. I was read by over 100k a day, and could write what i felt like.
my phtography is in magazines aroun the world
so i have done that too.
i went to bronx sciecne. so acheived that kind of thing before i was a teen. even played lincoln center and carnegie hall before my cousin (he graduated top of his class at juliard). except that his concert was his and i was in an orchestra.
(not bad for someone who is more than 50% deaf!)
so… my interest is in teaching people to give them the tools to a better life.
is it any wonder that i tend to not listen to the rubes in the class who by their actions would deny others an education?
i have no desire to be another victor david hanson.
i have already had fame years ago, and who cares? i hang out with the famous and notable (last year got to speak with rushdie for a while, and despite his poor attitude, is still a better person to talk with than Hux)
i guess you guys can figure out how to get out of a trap designed by some of the smartest people in modern history paid to sit all day and think of how to trick you. whats more, your going to do it from a position of complete ignorance and fantasy.
so it should be a good show.
=[
brevity is good writing when your writing to ENTERTAIN.
ever notice that magazine articles are short, and short histories over 1000 pages easy.
would you like your doctor to have this idea of good writing and to have learned from a medical book that cut down all the meat and salient stuff to just the 200 words and that he could skip over the parts he doesnt like?
so there are different purposes to writing.
not one purpose.
if you want to be entertained by history, then skip me and read hux or go to huffingon post, or get a copy of Zinn.
but i thought the point here was not to entertain but to take our lives seriously. to actually KNOW what was going on!!! that we thougth what was going on was serious enough to be taken seriously.
my mistake.
Didnt know it was a clutch of who cant see past their own desires and then realize that the point to the world is not to be pleasured and entertained by others who want to be pleasured and entertained.
funny how people can sit and complain of the very behavior that they exhibit.
want to know why there are studs in kids faces, and tramp stamps, fecundity down, crap on tv and such?
when ya abused the smart people
(coming out of an era celebrating them)
you gave them mental bang ups
and the left capitailzed on it
and gave them a home
in exchange for enslaving you!!!
i dont get off on shadenfreude
so thats not my thing, but you would be
very surprised how many at the top levels
harbor deep seated childish things like that.
Barney Miller – Atomic Bomb
The main character was Capt. Barney Miller, and there was an accompanying cast of characters that dealt with events and people in their own unique ways. My favorite was Detective Sgt. Arthur Dietrich (Steve Landesberg). He was the serious intellectual with a very dry sense of humor that came out at just the right moment.
remember that character?
A person who could do much more by your standards all, and instead was a cop.
that is, he didnt want the accolades, and rewards that kept the nihilist hedonists going, he worked for his own rewards!!!
you know… like america used to promise
[and which is impossible if you guys pound the tall poppies down, and attack the bent nails]
by the way. the abuse of the public heaped upon the fringe is what motivates the fringe to think that a totalitarian state with all under crap is better than a free state where people similar to many here, make their lives crap!!! at least in the new world, they arent the only ones getting crapped on.
One episode has always stuck out in my memory where a college student claims to have built a working model of a thermonuclear bomb as part of his Master’s thesis project. All it lacks, per him, is plutonium.
The bomb squad expert ridiculed the idea of it being any kind of bomb – his decades of experience on the force being his guide.
All the guys in the office have just finished dismissing the notion, when Dietrich walks in, takes a look at the contraption, and casually asks, “Where did you get the atom bomb?”
http://www.hulu.com/embed/ODhUC26MBOFXqY-0rAdSSw
[for accuracies sake, no plutonium in an atom bomb, so the writer didnt know enough about bombs to get the story he loves straight]
you guys will do as well with it as the bomb squad did… after all, they knew all there was to know about bombs and such…
however it wasnt how much they knew
it was waht they didnt know
and in this situation, i am not worried about not knowing… i know my history in the big wordy very detailed way.. sciences and other things too, so i also have tools for devining validity as well.
enjoy!
oh.. i leave it to those who would folow the link and watch the whole show to know what the kid says!!!
its a bigger punchline that detriechs line as he comes out of the bathroom (i think. i havent seen it since the 70s… i can remember things to that detail)
now those that want to know ahve to watch 25 minute episode…
just like in the posts above, to get to one quote, you had to read the 1300 pages of ONE history book and put up references to mroe than six, and was lambasted that i couldnt reduce 6 history books which each on average over 5 times the size of a entertainment book into 200 words.
Das Kapitol is FOUR volumes long…
there are nine volumes to gramsci prison notebooks… (vol 3 is 700 pages)
you guys have been taught to a 5th grade level
these guys wrote when 13th grade level was common and such writings were common in books for the young (like james fenimore coopers leatherstocking)
asking me to summarize them with references is basically asking me to make marx and all that stuff accessible to a 5th grader.
lei feng had a little red book, but his other writings could be used in battle.
want to read lenins collected works? (as i have)
here is VOLUME 38
Lenin – Philosophical Notebooks, Volume 38 of the Collected Works
http://www.scribd.com/doc/4025775/Lenin-Philosophical-Notebooks-Volume-38-of-the-Collected-Works
660 pages for vol 38…
mein kampf 694 pages
All of these would be required reading before being able to start debating the subject seriously.
if you havent read them already in your life, then your not going to read them when i say to, as you have more than 40,000 pages just to get through lenin and then start on stalin.
40,000 pages and you complain about a couple of long paragraphs.
on top of that i have read things like
STALIN AND MARXISM: A RESEARCH NOTE
in journal Studies in East European Thought
that is journals and things most dont even know exist.
This article concerns the research done by the author in Stalin’s private library. The notes made in the works of Marx, Engels and Lenin suggest that until the end of his life Stalin felt himself in general agreement with these “classics.” The choice of books and the notes support the thesis that, despite his historical interest and his identification with some of the tsars as powerful rulers, Stalin always continued to consider himself a Marxist, and that he was uninterested in other systems of thought, including those of traditional Russia.
its on springerlink if you have access like i do.
and this stuff isnt even my passion.
this is reading i have done in passing!!!
the patriots history of the united states is big
For at least thirty years, high school and college students have been taught to be embarrassed by American history. Required readings have become skewed toward a relentless focus on our countryé‚’s darkest moments, from slavery to McCarthyism. As a result, many history books devote more space to Harriet Tubman than to Abraham Lincoln; more to My Lai than to the American Revolution; more to the internment of Japanese Americans than to the liberation of Europe in World War II.
Now, finally, there is an antidote to this biased approach to our history. Two veteran history professors have written a sweeping, well-researched book that puts the spotlight back on Americaé‚’s role as a beacon of liberty to the rest of the world.
Schweikart and Allen are careful to tell their story straight, from Columbusé‚’s voyage to the capture of Saddam Hussein. They do not ignore Americaé‚’s mistakes through the years, but they put them back in their proper perspective. And they conclude that Americaé‚’s place as a world leader derived largely from the virtues of our own leadersé‚– the men and women who cleared the wilderness, abolished slavery, and rid the world of fascism and communism.
The authors write in a clear and enjoyable style that makes history a pleasure, not just for students but also for adults who want to learn what their teachers skipped over.
its over 1000 pages.
so i guess all these writiers, including war and peace, and big books like the three volumes of the musketeers… the iliad… all that are poor writing as they are waqy too long.
(heck one of them is a poem!!!)
want to know why they are winning?
because they read all this and know the deal
and you guys sit around pretending THEY are stupid.
My insensitive comments on Compulsive-Obsessive Bi-Polar NEED Disorder “are awaiting moderation.”
I, lowly knuckle dragging rube, apologize to the Landlord and the humble, yet giving Master of Learning & Humility & Massive Amounts of Blog Space.
NeoConScum,
ever thought that acting like crazy king george is not a way to go through life making surface judgments.
if you were smart as your snarky statements make clear you want us to believe. then they would work better if they were not trying to be taller by telling everyoen to get on their knees!!!
its marxian to think that neo and others should oversee reality and control it so it suits you. (this goes for others too). or that we should be homogenized to one set of ideas and limits as set by you and a few. by what right? by what true need is this the way to go? who told you that you were so special that you could make demands on others and offer nothing but the repreive of insults if such complies?
think hard here…
i dont bellittle you because you cant think. i belittle you because you wont think and can. big difference!!!!!!!!!!!
it gets your goat, but not enough to turn off the mechanisms of ignorance and have you stop a second and think beyond what the ignorant say that sounds more comforatable.
I dont think the common man is a rube and such, and i can give reasons. the change from the 1950s and before when smart people were respected and regarded by the public created a social condition. since i didnt attend years and years of college and didnt have someone restricting my learning, i was out in the world, and i learned to LOVE the common man.
NeoConScum, there is a difference between REAL love and fake love. REAL love means i cant be dishonest to you. i have to be tough to you as i want the bigger picture to work out for you, and if that makes the short term miserable, then so be it.
what you dont see is that this is not about my long posts and never was. its about the tall poppy. its about the fact that you were raised to be superior for no reason. that is, you dont achieve in kind to your abilities. most dont even go out and try, giving up before that point.
IDEOLOGY is about creating a false schema. a short cut of reasoning that those who wont think adopt. in this case, length of post as a means of determining value. is it a valid schema? cant the ideas attempting to justify it, make progress in a debate over the concept that short posts are always valuable, and long ones are just the result of a mental disorder?
how nice, a mental view of the world that raises ignorance to supremecy, and intelligence, sacrifice, sharing and participation as a mental desease. who then has the mental desease that prevents learning? the one who has learned, or the one who thinks that the product of learnign is a mental disorder?
i would not bother with you if you couldnt do it. i dont sit in the park and teach birds politics. they dont understand, and i dont know their language. all you have accomplished with your post is to label yourself a luddite while attempting to put me in the camp of the elite.
you arent angry at me because i get the girls in real life… so thats not it. you arent angry at me because my intelligence bring me huge amounts of money… so thats not it. you arent angry at me because you already know what i am saying and so its a waste of time… so thats not it.
so why are you pavlovian trained to attack someone else that may have a skill or an ability that you dont have (and you percieve may give them an unequal advantage over you?)
because i am willing to stand on my own, and not be a collectivist.
your whole set of posts not on the subject of the blog. not on even content of what i said. all just a soviet style rule that all posts should be X size, and that everyone should comply. if they dont, they are going to be punished by the self appointed social police and they will impose proper modes of allowed speech.
and yet you call your self conservative. and yet you argue agaisnt such behavior.and yet, you do nothing but exibit the borgian mind of conformity to the colllective, rather than celebrate the value in our differnce. was your comment and such based on the “character of my content”? (couldnt help the reverse pun)…
your abilities in writing say you have more potential …start using it.
Stupidity has no cure
Ignorance is curable
the choice is with the person with the condition
spreading the desease as a means of normalizing reality to hide the desease by making it appear normal.
is not a cure.
The Landlord, whom I like & respect, has expressed her wishes and I shall obey to the limits of my ability to keep my oversensitive gag reflex for BS under restraint.
The inability to clear my Evil Neocon throat in under 8-paragraphs has never been a problem for me. Comprende?
Charles the Great, the subject of this thread, had some wonderful things to say tonight on Fox about the Gore-Bull Warmers. He, as usual, made his spot-on points in brief, paradoxical and humorous ways. A fine example of brevity and not one mention of himself. My hat’s to Charles le Grande.
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