VirulentNeoCon
... and yet, it moves.
This is a thread moved from another place, where it was inappropriate.
At the kind suggestion of someone, here is a short summary, so that you can decide whether
it's worth reading further:
For the last twenty years at least, the US has pursued a dangerous and self-defeating foreign
policy. This policy was bi-partisan, and is driven by what President Eisenhower called the
"military-industrial complex", (and we could now add 'academic' to the other two adjectives).
American liberals have generally been opposed to this -- not their elected representatives, but
the rank and file, especially those who are active in pursuit of liberal causes.
The American conservative movement has generally been in favor it, usually vociferously so.
But that has changed. Hard experience has made most people on the Right opposed to further
foreign wars of choice.
This presents people who want to see a change in American foreign policy with an opportunity.
This thread examines this change in a bit more detail, and proposes that Leftist and Rightists
should find a way to co operate on this issue, to their mutual advantage.
=====================================================================
What I would like to do here is to see if we -- Lefties and Righties -- might be able
to take a couple of areas where we have substantial agreement, and turn it into effective action.
For example: the world seems to be moving in an ominous direction right now: as in Ukraine.
In the past, the folks on the Right were reflexive patriots -- any war the President wanted to start, they backed it, with enthusiasm.
No longer. In effect, they have become liberals with respect to foreign interventions.
Hard to believe perhaps, but true.
It's not a well-thought-out, settled conviction, they have not elaborated an alternative to their former positions, but
the sentiment is there, and it's strong. Tucker Carlson merely reflects this.
Yes, there are still some people who have the same views they had in 2001, including outright chauvinists,
but they're very much in the minority now. Rememeber that my side has got a lot of vets -- and no one is more credible,
on the Right at least, than a veteran explaining why he was sent on Mission Impossible.
But this could change.
Now ... wouldn't it be good if this mass feeling -- no more trying to bring democracy to the Third World at the point of American
bayonets -- could be consolidated, crystalized, given some informational content, and above all, directed at our elected
representatives so that they would think twice about sending in the 82nd Airborne to some place they are not wanted?
It won't happen without conscious effort. You probably know as well as I do that our dear representatives in Congress, from both
parties, are deeply entangled in the military-industrial complex, through campaign contributions, the influence of lobbyists, job
offers for them and their friends and relations. (You probably know also that it was a Republican, President Eisenhower, who coined
this term and pointed out the dangers that its existence posed to our Republic.)
Okay, this thread is for laughing at the Right and feeling superior, not for serious discussion. But if anyone's interested in exploring
what I'm proposing, DM me.
====================================== A response ================================================
This shows that your political method has changed little since the days of being on the irrelevant and delusional far left - if you seriously think that a coalition to stop Western agression towards Russia is going to be in any way influenced by you discussing things with a few randos on an obscure internet forum in 2022.
No offence but that's not how politics works. This can be a decent place to discuss politics even if you don't agree with the mainstream on here view but it's never contributed to anything other than pleasant time wasting. Which is a good thing in itself but doesn't lead to real world political action.
.
============================= My reply =========================================================
Thank you for the civil reply. Please don't think that I am not aware of the fact that my own personal efforts to do something, compared to the task, are .... as 1 to 1000 000 000 000.
You counsel political passivity ... leave it to our masters. I urge you to think again.
Yes, I'm just one person.
But .... there are probably thousands of people like me. I say "probably" because I don't know, but I do know that if I am thinking a certain way, it's probably not mainly because of my own brilliant intellect, but because I have been influenced by social trends, ie by other people who feel the same way and in various ways make this known.
I follow the American Right pretty closely, via social media, and in other ways, such as by participation in many conservative and militia forums.
I can tell you that the transformation among them over the last decade has been remarkable. I could re-post hundreds of things people have said in conservative forums and on, on Social Media, and inter-leave them with readers' comments from Mother Jones or TruthOut or CounterPunch, and you would not be able to tell which originated from where.
There are people on the Left who understand this: Michael Moore used to be one; Michael Lind does.
But the curent momentum within the Left is all around identity politics, lubricated by a healthy dose of class snobbery, so no one there seems to trying to take advantage of a development that from their (your?) point of view, ought be manna from heaven.
Just consider: we supported the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, you (the real Left, not Democratic hacks) opposed them (with a few exceptions, such as the late and much-lamented Christopher Hitchens).
You denounced the big corporations, you opposed shipping American jobs abroad, you opposed union-busting ... we supported it.
You were right. We were wrong. Maybe you were right for the wrong reasons (as I think), but at the end of the day, it's what you said and did, not why you said and did it.
So I see a huge opportunity here, to come together for limited aims of which we both approve -- first of all, to try to curb the war machine.
And there is recent precedent at the top: The surviving Koch brother -- one of your (?) side's bête noires -- has joined with George Soros -- one of my side's r bête noires -- to work togetther
to get a non-interventionist foreign policy. See here: https:// quincyinst.org
Both of them are billionaires, and apparently they had their research team do an analysis of how an all-out global thermonuclear war would affect profits. Evidently, it would affect them
negatively, although the stock market wouldn't so much plunge, as ascend into the stratosphere as radioactive glowing vapor. So they decided to do something about it.
Unfortunately, they nothing about political action -- they just give money to groups they like. So this obscure think tank is virtually unknown, although the neo-cons reacted strongly
against it.
I've already mentioned a widely-read (on the Right) book by FH Buckley, proposing to turn the Republicans into the American equivalent of their European 'Social Christian' counterparts.
The problem is, these people -- like the people who publish journals on the Right which also favor a restrained foreign policy, like American Conservative and Chronicles of American Culture, are not
'campaigners'. Their concept of political action is to write a paper, and occasionally publish a book.. All worthy and useful things, but ... they don't reach the Republican farmer, auto mechanic, waitress.
There is another consideration, which I won't expand on here. The United States is entering ... has been on ... an unknown, and possibly very unstable political path.
We are in decline, and China is on the way up. The very fact that the American Right is represented by Donald Trump, and the Left, by Joe Biden -- facing men like Putin and Xi, intelligent men commanding powerful, compliant states, and filled with steely determination to gut the Great Satan -- is just a superficial manifestation of something going wrong in the body politic.
People on the Left screech about 'fascism' and 'white supremacy' as being typical of the Right. Their vaporings can be dismissed with a wave of the hand.
But ... the potential is there, let's not kid ourselves. 'Populism' can take a very ugly turn. So far, it hasn't.
However, there are groups on the Right, and some pretty capable ones, not the kiddies and their FBI handlers you see on TV, who would like to make the Left's hysterical accusations into reality.
So far they remain isolated. But this could change.
Suppose there is a dramatic American military humilation abroad, close in time to a big economic collapse. Anyone who knows their history will think: Weimar Germany.
In 1929, the Nazis got 2.5% of the popular vote. Four years later, they got 37%.
Now I have no idea, at the moment, how a group of serious people from Left and Right would actually work together for common aims, how we would decide what to do, and above all, what we would do. This would be something to be discussed. The first thing would be to find more people with the same idea, and construct some sort of framework for discussion.
Anyone who is interested in this idea should PM me.
At the kind suggestion of someone, here is a short summary, so that you can decide whether
it's worth reading further:
For the last twenty years at least, the US has pursued a dangerous and self-defeating foreign
policy. This policy was bi-partisan, and is driven by what President Eisenhower called the
"military-industrial complex", (and we could now add 'academic' to the other two adjectives).
American liberals have generally been opposed to this -- not their elected representatives, but
the rank and file, especially those who are active in pursuit of liberal causes.
The American conservative movement has generally been in favor it, usually vociferously so.
But that has changed. Hard experience has made most people on the Right opposed to further
foreign wars of choice.
This presents people who want to see a change in American foreign policy with an opportunity.
This thread examines this change in a bit more detail, and proposes that Leftist and Rightists
should find a way to co operate on this issue, to their mutual advantage.
=====================================================================
What I would like to do here is to see if we -- Lefties and Righties -- might be able
to take a couple of areas where we have substantial agreement, and turn it into effective action.
For example: the world seems to be moving in an ominous direction right now: as in Ukraine.
In the past, the folks on the Right were reflexive patriots -- any war the President wanted to start, they backed it, with enthusiasm.
No longer. In effect, they have become liberals with respect to foreign interventions.
Hard to believe perhaps, but true.
It's not a well-thought-out, settled conviction, they have not elaborated an alternative to their former positions, but
the sentiment is there, and it's strong. Tucker Carlson merely reflects this.
Yes, there are still some people who have the same views they had in 2001, including outright chauvinists,
but they're very much in the minority now. Rememeber that my side has got a lot of vets -- and no one is more credible,
on the Right at least, than a veteran explaining why he was sent on Mission Impossible.
But this could change.
Now ... wouldn't it be good if this mass feeling -- no more trying to bring democracy to the Third World at the point of American
bayonets -- could be consolidated, crystalized, given some informational content, and above all, directed at our elected
representatives so that they would think twice about sending in the 82nd Airborne to some place they are not wanted?
It won't happen without conscious effort. You probably know as well as I do that our dear representatives in Congress, from both
parties, are deeply entangled in the military-industrial complex, through campaign contributions, the influence of lobbyists, job
offers for them and their friends and relations. (You probably know also that it was a Republican, President Eisenhower, who coined
this term and pointed out the dangers that its existence posed to our Republic.)
Okay, this thread is for laughing at the Right and feeling superior, not for serious discussion. But if anyone's interested in exploring
what I'm proposing, DM me.
====================================== A response ================================================
This shows that your political method has changed little since the days of being on the irrelevant and delusional far left - if you seriously think that a coalition to stop Western agression towards Russia is going to be in any way influenced by you discussing things with a few randos on an obscure internet forum in 2022.
No offence but that's not how politics works. This can be a decent place to discuss politics even if you don't agree with the mainstream on here view but it's never contributed to anything other than pleasant time wasting. Which is a good thing in itself but doesn't lead to real world political action.
.
============================= My reply =========================================================
Thank you for the civil reply. Please don't think that I am not aware of the fact that my own personal efforts to do something, compared to the task, are .... as 1 to 1000 000 000 000.
You counsel political passivity ... leave it to our masters. I urge you to think again.
Yes, I'm just one person.
But .... there are probably thousands of people like me. I say "probably" because I don't know, but I do know that if I am thinking a certain way, it's probably not mainly because of my own brilliant intellect, but because I have been influenced by social trends, ie by other people who feel the same way and in various ways make this known.
I follow the American Right pretty closely, via social media, and in other ways, such as by participation in many conservative and militia forums.
I can tell you that the transformation among them over the last decade has been remarkable. I could re-post hundreds of things people have said in conservative forums and on, on Social Media, and inter-leave them with readers' comments from Mother Jones or TruthOut or CounterPunch, and you would not be able to tell which originated from where.
There are people on the Left who understand this: Michael Moore used to be one; Michael Lind does.
But the curent momentum within the Left is all around identity politics, lubricated by a healthy dose of class snobbery, so no one there seems to trying to take advantage of a development that from their (your?) point of view, ought be manna from heaven.
Just consider: we supported the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, you (the real Left, not Democratic hacks) opposed them (with a few exceptions, such as the late and much-lamented Christopher Hitchens).
You denounced the big corporations, you opposed shipping American jobs abroad, you opposed union-busting ... we supported it.
You were right. We were wrong. Maybe you were right for the wrong reasons (as I think), but at the end of the day, it's what you said and did, not why you said and did it.
So I see a huge opportunity here, to come together for limited aims of which we both approve -- first of all, to try to curb the war machine.
And there is recent precedent at the top: The surviving Koch brother -- one of your (?) side's bête noires -- has joined with George Soros -- one of my side's r bête noires -- to work togetther
to get a non-interventionist foreign policy. See here: https:// quincyinst.org
Both of them are billionaires, and apparently they had their research team do an analysis of how an all-out global thermonuclear war would affect profits. Evidently, it would affect them
negatively, although the stock market wouldn't so much plunge, as ascend into the stratosphere as radioactive glowing vapor. So they decided to do something about it.
Unfortunately, they nothing about political action -- they just give money to groups they like. So this obscure think tank is virtually unknown, although the neo-cons reacted strongly
against it.
I've already mentioned a widely-read (on the Right) book by FH Buckley, proposing to turn the Republicans into the American equivalent of their European 'Social Christian' counterparts.
The problem is, these people -- like the people who publish journals on the Right which also favor a restrained foreign policy, like American Conservative and Chronicles of American Culture, are not
'campaigners'. Their concept of political action is to write a paper, and occasionally publish a book.. All worthy and useful things, but ... they don't reach the Republican farmer, auto mechanic, waitress.
There is another consideration, which I won't expand on here. The United States is entering ... has been on ... an unknown, and possibly very unstable political path.
We are in decline, and China is on the way up. The very fact that the American Right is represented by Donald Trump, and the Left, by Joe Biden -- facing men like Putin and Xi, intelligent men commanding powerful, compliant states, and filled with steely determination to gut the Great Satan -- is just a superficial manifestation of something going wrong in the body politic.
People on the Left screech about 'fascism' and 'white supremacy' as being typical of the Right. Their vaporings can be dismissed with a wave of the hand.
But ... the potential is there, let's not kid ourselves. 'Populism' can take a very ugly turn. So far, it hasn't.
However, there are groups on the Right, and some pretty capable ones, not the kiddies and their FBI handlers you see on TV, who would like to make the Left's hysterical accusations into reality.
So far they remain isolated. But this could change.
Suppose there is a dramatic American military humilation abroad, close in time to a big economic collapse. Anyone who knows their history will think: Weimar Germany.
In 1929, the Nazis got 2.5% of the popular vote. Four years later, they got 37%.
Now I have no idea, at the moment, how a group of serious people from Left and Right would actually work together for common aims, how we would decide what to do, and above all, what we would do. This would be something to be discussed. The first thing would be to find more people with the same idea, and construct some sort of framework for discussion.
Anyone who is interested in this idea should PM me.
Last edited:
