A United Front for a Sane Foreign Policy? Can Left and Right co operate?

[Dom Traynor]

One of the points you are missing is that most people on here don't believe US style neoliberalism would be an improvement in the regimes you mention, whether exported through soft power or hard power.

 

[Carl Steele]

Why are you hostile to this idea? The neo-cons wouldn't like it, for sure. The people who now influence/imlement American foreign policy wouldn't like it.
But surely it ought to be something that people like youi -- who, I assume, are some sort of Leftist -- could get behind.

It's Fantasy Politics - you could consider marketing it as video game, first player to get left and right to unite wins.

Remember Geoff White's point about Trotskyism, the amazing ideas, the complete failure to affect the world? Not that I think your ideas are amazing.

Have you ever looked at Bret Weinstein's Unity2020? He and his followers chose two candidates Tulsi Gabbard and Dan Crenshaw as their left/right presidential ticket. Problem was, neither Gabbard nor Crenshaw wanted to run, and Weinstein's campaign had no way to get on the ballot. But it made for good podcasting. So maybe you could start a podcast, see how much interest you can drum up.

 

[NoXion]

I think I understand the mentality of many of the jaded, oh-so-sophisticated Lefties here, trying to show how smart they are.

You know that socialism is dead. A big disappointment to you. So you spend your time indulging yourselves in various ways, withdrawn from real politics.

Fine, free country and all that. So go back to your XBoxes or whatever. (You're not as clever as you think you are, by the way. I would be embarrassed to admit that I could not
read a few hundred words, but to each his own.)

If you genuinely want people here to actually engage with you, then stop making posts like this. It's counter-productive.

 

[kebabking]

For one who has ditched the political politics of Spartism caiming it was all bollocks, it's remarkable how much of of the methodology of spart politics our friend has retained.

Crazy, disjointed ideas, abuse at anyone who disagrees or calls out the shit methodology, adopting a position of moral/intellectual/philosophical superiority over everyone else - based on fuck all I might add - maybe it wasn't the Sparts, maybe it was just him?

 

[VirulentNeoCon]

You may be right. It's clearly a shot in the dark.

Look, I'm 78 years old, on Final Approach, and I'd far rather spend my remaining time reading all the classics I skipped when I was young, improving my Russian, mastering second-order partial differential equations. But I see what may be an opportunity, maybe transient, to push the world in a better direction, and I'm going to try.

As for Trotskyism and irelevance. Actually, the opposite is true. The Spartacist League pissed into the wind ... but during the Vietnam war, the SWP/YSA did the right thing in terms of building the anti-war movement -- pushing to organize around the single issue of Immediate Withdrawal, against the attempts of groups like the SL to tie into anti-capitalism, and against the lunatics who wanted to 'bring the war home'. They made a difference.

Or look at the 1930's. The communist groups were never mass parties, but in 1934 there were three city-wide general strikes in support of establishing trade unions, all successful, each led by a different communist organization (!). And then the CP, and the other Marxist/socialist groups, went on to play a very big role in organizing the CIO.

Spark, prairie fire.

I'm ashamed to admit that I did not pay any attention to Bret Weinstein's Unity 2020 -- I barely heard of it. (This keeps happening ... I keep coming across little gold nuggets out there and wondering how I had missed them. The latest is this fellow Hananian.)

But ... I am NOT proposing a 'fusion ticket', ie in terms you and I know, a Popular Front. It's a United Front, albeit, in SL terms, a 'United Front for Propaganda', so I guess the SL won't be taking part.

A fusion ticket, or some sort of big realignment in American politics, would be wonderful. But right now, it's totally ruled out because most of the people on my side are deeply loyal to Mr Trump.

Were the occasion to arise, I would hope that the Left would choose Jim Webb, of whom you are probably aware -- former Secretary of the Navy under Reagan, a decorated Marine officer and Vietnam veteran, and someone who saw the light as soon as Bush began to talk about invading the world. He was the Senator from Virginia, but seems to have withdrawn from political life.

Tulsi Gabbard is wonderful, and you might be surprised by the number of people on the Right whom I've run across on various forums who admire her. But as soon as her name is mentioned favorably in any discussion thread, some crabby political fundamentalist will leap in and point out that she's a "Socialist! A Socialist!", presumably crossing themselves while doing so. So better someone like Jim Web.

From my side, while I admire Dan Crenshaw, and note that he's been trying to put some daylight between himself and Mr Trump, I think we should, were there a fusion ticket, put up one of the strong Black women who are now emerging amongst us ... but hopefully not another Condoleeza Rice. I contributed to Winsome Sears' campaign and was pleased to see her win, although I don't know whether she is sophisticated about national and international politics. But people can learn.

However, that's music of the future. What I have in mind now is something like a simple Manifesto, No More Foreign Adventures, some title like that, with two or three paragraphs of motivating prose.

Something that could be put up as a petition, printed out and posted and distributed everywhere.

It would have to get some Heavy Hitters to endorse it first, and I have some in mind.

One thing it might do is to spark discussion about what American foreign policy ought to be. Right now, as I keep insisting, there is no appetite at all among the ranks of the Right for another democracy-bearing invasion. But this is just a mood, not a settled conviction. It needs to be reinforced via discussion and argument, and this might help cause that.

But ... even if it could get some big names behind it, it would requrie a cadre of a few dozen people to get it mentioned all over the web, in forums, on the comments section of various online news sites, on Twitter, in the comments section of YouTube videos. I've assembled a list of target sites, I have an email list of 15 000 conservative or probable-conservative individuals or organizations, I've got 10 000 followers on Twitter ... but we need several dozen more people.

You clearly know what you're talking about. You would be a huge asset in something like this.

Please re-consider. If you see this project taking off, you're always welcome to come on board.

 

[VirulentNeoCon]

If you genuinely want people here to actually engage with you, then stop making posts like this. It's counter-productive.

I don't fire the first shot.

It's not my fault that there are a bunch of thin-skinned puffed up litte egos here, who can dish it out but can't take it.

Anyway, I'm looking for serious people and I couldn't give a shit what these little mama's boys think.

On the Left there are two kinds of people: those who are there for their own personal gratification, and those who
want to change the world and are willing to subordinate their own interests to a cause greater than themselves.

Although I disagree with how the latter want to go about it, I admire their motives and their
determination, their willingness to make personal sacrifices in pursuit of an ideal.

People like this are, as Trotsky said about a Jewish boy who assassinated a Nazi diplomat -- a terribly misguided
act, as it gave the Nazis the excuse for krystallnacht --, "the precious leaven of mankind".

The other kind are human rubbish.

 

[NoXion]

I don't fire the first shot.

If you were responding to a specific post/poster then you might have had a point, but by making yours so generic it looks like you're basically slagging off all of us. Well done, are you trying to alienate everyone here? Because that kind of hostile vagueposting is exactly the way to do that.

 

[NoXion]

I don't fire the first shot.

It's not my fault that there are a bunch of thin-skinned puffed up litte egos here, who can dish it out but can't take it.

Anyway, I'm looking for serious people and I couldn't give a shit what these little mama's boys think.

On the Left there are two kinds of people: those who are there for their own personal gratification, and those who
want to change the world and are willing to subordinate their own interests to a cause greater than themselves.

Although I disagree with how the latter want to go about it, I admire their motives and their
determination, their willingness to make personal sacrifices in pursuit of an ideal.

People like this are, as Trotsky said about a Jewish boy who assassinated a Nazi diplomat -- a terribly misguided
act, as it gave the Nazis the excuse for krystallnacht --, "the precious leaven of mankind".

The other kind are human rubbish.

Oh wow, this edit. More hostile vagueposting. You've forgotten the first rule of holes.

 

[krtek a houby]

Mama's Boys.

Thin Lizzy contemporaries, iirc?

 

[VirulentNeoCon]

One of the points you are missing is that most people on here don't believe US style neoliberalism would be an improvement in the regimes you mention, whether exported through soft power or hard power.

Yes. It's remarkable.

When I was a Trotskyist, one of the things I never really accepted way down deep was that World War Two was just like World War One, and that we of course should not support either side in any way -- not even "militarily but not politically" to use a term of art.

Trotsky himself was uneasy with this position, not being a fool, and it gave rise to the SWP's "proletarian military policy", grotesque, but an attempt to get to grips with the reality that
if the Nazis won the war, the situation for the working class, and especially its most "advanced elements" as they modestly described themselves, would be .... different ... than if the Allies won,
which was not true for World War One.

So these folks have to believe that there is no difference between life in North Korea, and life in South Korea.

That a Chile where a Leftist can stand in an election, and win, is just the same as one in which they stand in the doors of hellicopters before being pushed into the sea.

Of course this is a position you only take if you live in a nice comfortable neo-liberal democracy. And it wasn't Marx and Engles' position either, who saw imperialism, brutal as
it was, playing a positive role in the backward countries.

I recall Harold MacMillan, speaking of Mrs Thatcher, saying something like "When ideology gets its grip on you, that's the end of you," by which he meant that's the end of your
common sense.

And he was right.

 

[Sue]

We almost had a campaign going for a fellow who was fired for being a 'whistle blower' over fire safety at a big casino in North Carolina. I thought it would be -- in addition
to being a just cause in itself -- a great opportunity to get people on the Right involved in something that would raise the issue of unionization, and why patriots should
support it. (He didn't have a union where he worked, but after he -- and his wife -- were sacked, he wanted to organize one.)

It didn't pan out, but I'm still looking for a similar opportunity.

Hang on, you're going to Change the World but you couldn't/wouldn't/didn't even run a basic campaign to support someone who'd been unfairly sacked?

 

[Dom Traynor]

Hang on, you're going to Change the World but you couldn't/wouldn't/didn't even run a basic campaign to support someone who'd been unfairly sacked?

To be fair North Carolina is an at will state.

 

[Smangus]

Yes. It's remarkable.

When I was a Trotskyist, one of the things I never really accepted way down deep was that World War Two was just like World War One, and that we of course should not support either side in any way -- not even "militarily but not politically" to use a term of art.

Trotsky himself was uneasy with this position, not being a fool, and it gave rise to the SWP's "proletarian military policy", grotesque, but an attempt to get to grips with the reality that
if the Nazis won the war, the situation for the working class, and especially its most "advanced elements" as they modestly described themselves, would be .... different ... than if the Allies won,
which was not true for World War One.

So these folks have to believe that there is no difference between life in North Korea, and life in South Korea.

That a Chile where a Leftist can stand in an election, and win, is just the same as one in which they stand in the doors of hellicopters before being pushed into the sea.

Of course this is a position you only take if you live in a nice comfortable neo-liberal democracy. And it wasn't Marx and Engles' position either, who saw imperialism, brutal as
it was, playing a positive role in the backward countries.

I recall Harold MacMillan, speaking of Mrs Thatcher, saying something like "When ideology gets its grip on you, that's the end of you," by which he meant that's the end of your
common sense.

And he was right.

Yeah but what do you think about the Tooting People's Popular Front and Wolfie Smiths revolutionary proposition?

 

[Sue]

To be fair North Carolina is an at will state.

I was more juxtaposing the 'we nearly did this thing but didn't' stuff with the Sorting Out The World's Problems thing...

 

[A380]

You may be right. It's clearly a shot in the dark.

Look, I'm 78 years old, on Final Approach, and I'd far rather spend my remaining time reading all the classics I skipped when I was young, improving my Russian, mastering second-order partial differential equations. But I see what may be an opportunity, maybe transient, to push the world in a better direction, and I'm going to try.

As for Trotskyism and irelevance. Actually, the opposite is true. The Spartacist League pissed into the wind ... but during the Vietnam war, the SWP/YSA did the right thing in terms of building the anti-war movement -- pushing to organize around the single issue of Immediate Withdrawal, against the attempts of groups like the SL to tie into anti-capitalism, and against the lunatics who wanted to 'bring the war home'. They made a difference.

Or look at the 1930's. The communist groups were never mass parties, but in 1934 there were three city-wide general strikes in support of establishing trade unions, all successful, each led by a different communist organization (!). And then the CP, and the other Marxist/socialist groups, went on to play a very big role in organizing the CIO.

Spark, prairie fire.

I'm ashamed to admit that I did not pay any attention to Bret Weinstein's Unity 2020 -- I barely heard of it. (This keeps happening ... I keep coming across little gold nuggets out there and wondering how I had missed them. The latest is this fellow Hananian.)

But ... I am NOT proposing a 'fusion ticket', ie in terms you and I know, a Popular Front. It's a United Front, albeit, in SL terms, a 'United Front for Propaganda', so I guess the SL won't be taking part.

A fusion ticket, or some sort of big realignment in American politics, would be wonderful. But right now, it's totally ruled out because most of the people on my side are deeply loyal to Mr Trump.

Were the occasion to arise, I would hope that the Left would choose Jim Webb, of whom you are probably aware -- former Secretary of the Navy under Reagan, a decorated Marine officer and Vietnam veteran, and someone who saw the light as soon as Bush began to talk about invading the world. He was the Senator from Virginia, but seems to have withdrawn from political life.

Tulsi Gabbard is wonderful, and you might be surprised by the number of people on the Right whom I've run across on various forums who admire her. But as soon as her name is mentioned favorably in any discussion thread, some crabby political fundamentalist will leap in and point out that she's a "Socialist! A Socialist!", presumably crossing themselves while doing so. So better someone like Jim Web.

From my side, while I admire Dan Crenshaw, and note that he's been trying to put some daylight between himself and Mr Trump, I think we should, were there a fusion ticket, put up one of the strong Black women who are now emerging amongst us ... but hopefully not another Condoleeza Rice. I contributed to Winsome Sears' campaign and was pleased to see her win, although I don't know whether she is sophisticated about national and international politics. But people can learn.

However, that's music of the future. What I have in mind now is something like a simple Manifesto, No More Foreign Adventures, some title like that, with two or three paragraphs of motivating prose.

Something that could be put up as a petition, printed out and posted and distributed everywhere.

It would have to get some Heavy Hitters to endorse it first, and I have some in mind.

One thing it might do is to spark discussion about what American foreign policy ought to be. Right now, as I keep insisting, there is no appetite at all among the ranks of the Right for another democracy-bearing invasion. But this is just a mood, not a settled conviction. It needs to be reinforced via discussion and argument, and this might help cause that.

But ... even if it could get some big names behind it, it would requrie a cadre of a few dozen people to get it mentioned all over the web, in forums, on the comments section of various online news sites, on Twitter, in the comments section of YouTube videos. I've assembled a list of target sites, I have an email list of 15 000 conservative or probable-conservative individuals or organizations, I've got 10 000 followers on Twitter ... but we need several dozen more people.

You clearly know what you're talking about. You would be a huge asset in something like this.

Please re-consider. If you see this project taking off, you're always welcome to come on board.

This reads like a really rubbish version of ‘We Didn’t Light the Fire’…

 

[krtek a houby]

Yes. It's remarkable.

When I was a Trotskyist, one of the things I never really accepted way down deep was that World War Two was just like World War One, and that we of course should not support either side in any way -- not even "militarily but not politically" to use a term of art.

Trotsky himself was uneasy with this position, not being a fool, and it gave rise to the SWP's "proletarian military policy", grotesque, but an attempt to get to grips with the reality that
if the Nazis won the war, the situation for the working class, and especially its most "advanced elements" as they modestly described themselves, would be .... different ... than if the Allies won,
which was not true for World War One.

So these folks have to believe that there is no difference between life in North Korea, and life in South Korea.

That a Chile where a Leftist can stand in an election, and win, is just the same as one in which they stand in the doors of hellicopters before being pushed into the sea.

Of course this is a position you only take if you live in a nice comfortable neo-liberal democracy. And it wasn't Marx and Engles' position either, who saw imperialism, brutal as
it was, playing a positive role in the backward countries.

I recall Harold MacMillan, speaking of Mrs Thatcher, saying something like "When ideology gets its grip on you, that's the end of you," by which he meant that's the end of your
common sense.

And he was right.

"Backward countries"

 

[existentialist]

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.

Fuck me, and I thought I wrote long posts

 

[VirulentNeoCon]

Fuck me, and I thought I wrote long posts

Fuck me, and I thought I wrote long posts

Well, you've probably seen those Westerns where there's an old gunfighter, fastest gun in town ... and then a new kid arrives, to challenge him. I'm that new kid.
What's the longest post you've ever made? I'll see you and raise you 500 words.

 

[existentialist]

Well, you've probably seen those Westerns where there's an old gunfighter, fastest gun in town ... and then a new kid arrives, to challenge him. I'm that new kid.
What's the longest post you've ever made? I'll see you and raise you 500 words.

It's fine. If you want to have a pissing contest, you go right on and do that. I shan't be playing.

Just try not to piss on your own feet.

 

[NoXion]

I actually find his longer posts somewhat interesting. There's something to be said for the long-form post in this age of Tweets and microvideos. It's the extraneous, undirected abrasiveness and unwarranted attitude of superiority that makes me roll my eyes and question his integrity.

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

I actually find his longer posts somewhat interesting. There's something to be said for the long-form post in this age of Tweets and microvideos. It's the extraneous, undirected abrasiveness and unwarranted attitude of superiority that makes me roll my eyes and question his integrity.

And he does have a point. Once he's convinced everyone on Urban that he's right it'll be dead easy to convince every other Left and Right wing person in the US, the UK etc to follow his advice.

 

[Nylock]

I actually find his longer posts somewhat interesting. There's something to be said for the long-form post in this age of Tweets and microvideos.

This^

It's the extraneous, undirected abrasiveness and unwarranted attitude of superiority that makes me roll my eyes and question his integrity.

...and particularly this^

Along with the painfully misguided idea that he's somehow triggering a bunch of indolent, hopelessly spoiled, thin-skinned "mama's boys".

 

[A380]

So basically. We. Should. Put. The cheese and the beans on AT THE SAME TIME?!?

Genius.

 

[Carl Steele]

As for Trotskyism and irelevance. Actually, the opposite is true. The Spartacist League pissed into the wind ... but during the Vietnam war, the SWP/YSA did the right thing in terms of building the anti-war movement -- pushing to organize around the single issue of Immediate Withdrawal, against the attempts of groups like the SL to tie into anti-capitalism, and against the lunatics who wanted to 'bring the war home'. They made a difference.

Or look at the 1930's. The communist groups were never mass parties, but in 1934 there were three city-wide general strikes in support of trade unions, all successful, each led by a different communist organization (!). And then the CP, and the other Marxist/socialist groups, went on to play a very big role in organizing the CIO.

And how about Kshama Sawant? She's doing good work in Seattle. I'm sure she'd be pleased to hear from you.

I think we should, were there a fusion ticket, put up one of the strong Black women who are now emerging amongst us ...

How about Ilhan Omar?

btw I wasn't referencing Bret Weinstein favourably. He and his wife are cynical grifters and the Unity2020 campaign was a farce.

 

[Carl Steele]

I've got 10 000 followers on Twitter

What's your Twitter handle?

 

[Magnus McGinty]

@CantDoLongPosts

 

[VirulentNeoCon]

What's your Twitter handle?

So why don't you start then?

Why don't you actually illustrate what, roughly, you think this policy/group of policies might look like, rather than blather on endlessly about extraneous crap and rather pointedly not talk about what the policy might be?

Okay, let's start with the fundamentals of American foreign policy since WWII. .... we'll go through the Cold War ... American intervention in the Third World .. and then the collapse of the USSR, and the all-important 90s, where we screwed up big time, helping, in fact, Putin to get to power. We also need to look at how foreign policy is made in the US -- and here I draw on a fellow whose essays I've referenced above. The the GWOT, our intervention in Libya, the neo-con vision ... and on to Trump.

That's just an outline.

So I'll start .... but wait a minute. ... there are a bunch of people here who are burdened with very limited attention spans, or perhaps limited intellects as well, who get all agitated when the big boys talk about serious matters. I have no animosity towards them really -- its probably genetic and not under their control.

So I'm going to wait and see if anyone is interested in a real discussion, and we'll then take it private, so as not to annoy the low-IQ unfortunates.

As background, I'll assume people who want to discuss this stuff, have an elementary knowledge of post WWII Cold War history, and espeically of post-Soviet collapse history.
I can supply a reading list for those who don't -- and if anyone's really interested I'll send them some articles from Foreign Affairs and a few other journals.

But I'm not interested in a discussion of past history -- my sole aim is to find a few people, ideally from the Left, who think what I've outlined is at least worth talking about.

As the man said, the point is to change it.

 

[Magnus McGinty]

there are a bunch of people here who are burdened with very limited attention spans, or perhaps limited intellects as well, who get all agitated when the big boys talk about serious matters. I have no animosity towards them really -- its probably genetic and not under their control.

So I'm going to wait and see if anyone is interested in a real discussion, and we'll then take it private, so as not to annoy the low-IQ unfortunates.

They'd eat you for breakfast.

 

[nogojones]

I've got 10 000 followers on Twitter

Jedward have seventy times that influence. I'm sticking with them.

 

[Carl Steele]

So I'm going to wait and see if anyone is interested in a real discussion, and we'll then take it private, so as not to annoy the low-IQ unfortunates.

Do you think IQ is an accurate and reliable measure of intelligence?