07 March 2010

stop falling for the partisan propaganda

[click image, audio, mp3, fifteen minutes]

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Every single day I go to Antiwar.com first. I always check to see if Scott Horton has new interviews up and immediately begin listening to them as I'm poking around the tubes to see what else went wrong while I was asleep. I just adore this kid. He's in Los Angeles, but he's from Austin, Texas, and his Antiwar interviews are in tandem with KAOS radio in Austin. You might think that your master C.O.N.T.R.O.L. spy has gone over to the other side to be listening to K.A.O.S. radio, but it is quite apparently a sting operation on that crusty old group of perfidious dolts. You should never miss what Scott puts up on the Antiwar podcasting, and if any site is worth your support it is that one.

Scott Horton is a fierce Libertarian. He very frequently—in fact most frequently—interviews people on the left side of the political spectrum, and very often it is The Other Scott Horton, from Harper's and the Antiwar Scott heaps praises on the Harper's Scott as effusive as those he heaps on Ron Paul, his hero, here. With the exception of his position on 9/11 and some of his ideas about social issues, I think this kid is just fabulous. He tries harder to get at the truth than just about anybody out there, and I cannot recommend your attention to him highly enough.

I want to point out to you that he identifies most solidly with the libertarian end of conservatism and frequently interviews conservatives who sound damn lucid to me... even when I disagree with them... even when I know what they are saying is wrong or false... because it's never more wrong or false than some of the stuff we hear from liberals, and all of it is aimed at getting down to the kernel of being well-informed enough to wrest a sane society from this appalling hatchet job we call our country now.

In this particular podcast, the thing that struck me the hardest was the good light—deservedly so—it cast on the dreaded CPAC. We have all seen Max Blumenthal's outrageous and entertaining hit jobs on the CPAC people. We have all seen the sundry hit jobs on the Tea Parties. We have all seen the "hilarious" hit jobs on the American man-on-the-street. I have been pointing out for years that these things, while maybe showing SOME reality, are like that bogus O'Keefe video about ACORN. Editing is everything. The videographers, for the most part, will deny editing to make people look worse, or sound stupider, and maybe even some of them don't even realize they are lying, or that they had in fact not bothered to turn on the video cam at all when speaking with the more lucid people, but they are producing videos that fit their own world views, NOT bringing you unbiased reportage. They may not have had as evil intent as this O'Keefe jerk... OR it may be that the little shit is every bit as unaware of the perfidiousness of his work as they are.

Ron Paul won the CPAC straw poll this year by a landslide, and while I absolutely do NOT agree with him on some damn crucial issues, it cannot be denied that he is a GOOD man and that people follow him for GOOD reasons. He makes Arianna Huffington, John Amato, Josh Marshall, Markos Moulitsas, Max Blumenthal, Brad Friedman and many, many others on the supposedly progressive side look like dog meat. I'm preferring to think of them as fascists-in-denial just now, and hope that they awaken to the offenses against decency, comity, the constitution and freedom they commit every day. I think if you did something like try to listen to Scott Horton interviewing people every day that you might start to see this, start to see where the "left" is as brainwashed and manipulated as the "right".

The malign mental conditioning of which we complain so loudly, so bitterly, as it pertains to self-styled conservatives isn't a bit less effective in its application on the self-styled progressives, and it is so way past time we woke up to this fact.

It kind of blows my mind that the bald facts of Obama's presidency, even with those who admit his egregious offenses against us, didn't awaken us all immediately, but, whatever, I'm begging you to jump out of what you already think, realize the bullshit tricks being played on you by people who want to stoke your fires, and find ways to form solidarity with those who are not really on "the other side" at all.
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7 comments:

  1. Great interview 99...
    This is BlueHawk from Bradblog
    I check out your site everyday...as always it's awesome.

    Miss you over at Bradblog...

    Take Care...Peace...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dude. Glad to see you. Glad yer keeping in touch. You are one of the few things I miss about that place. I think I stayed so much longer than was even reasonable, considering how I feel about Brad's work, the various and too numerous areas where I vociferously disagree with him and, worse, feel it is actually very seriously harming, because there are some people there to whom I am darn attached. I expect everyone to overcome their attachments to people and ideas in order to see and communicate the truth... so I decided to practice what I preach.

    I'm always glad to hear from you, and please feel free to pipe up here with anything on your mind whenever you feel like it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I'm sure you caught this, wrote back that it's about time because I have arguments with true R/Libertarian friends all the time and we’re still friends. These aren’t the tea bag set for sure. We do agree that Military/Corp./Congress Complex is destroying America and turning its citizens in to 3rd/4th world serfs. It’s amazing what we do agree on.
    jo6pac
    http://original.antiwar.com/henderson/2010/03/04/the-left-right-conference-on-war/

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  4. Actually, I had not gotten to that one yet, and thank you so much for bringing it up. It might have fallen back into my mountains of meant-to-get-to pieces, when it was an important read. I already went pretty batshit happy about the announcement of this business, and this coverage of the event was mostly music to my ears.

    I do NOT think it is a good thing we ended the draft. I know we all thought it would end the wars, but it proved to actually FACILITATE them, since Congress has abdicated its Constitutional duty and since we can now conscript anyone hungry enough from anywhere with the carrot of citizenship for joining our military when we're too low in the recruiting department. Recruiting, of course, is way up because they have tanked the economy and that is literally the only living for so many young people. So I would have liked to see a better discussion of these things in that piece, but maybe there was a better discussion at the event.

    Congress should be made to take back their Constitutional duty; the draft should be reinstated, with NO loopholes for the privileged; war profiteering should carry a mandatory life sentence; and America should NEVER go to war unless it is in unequivocal defense of life.

    But, really, the ONLY part of this stuff that has a chance of TRULY bringing on positive manifestation is the part where people drop their partisan differences to decide together what is best for our country. I say this not because I feel that anything in such discussion will impact policy, but because it will unite the people against the plutocrats if we keep it up.

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  5. I think we have so much in common with the Libertarians because we tend to be pretty much of the left libertarian type around here. I mean we tend not to believe in mandating or proscribing behaviors, and there really are a lot of liberals who DO want to make all manner of their beliefs into law... even while screaming about the christofascists' urges to the same action. So I always find myself hotly agreeing with Libertarians until we get to the part about the social safety net. I'd goddam join the party if they would come up with a realistic and generous means of taking care of our less fortunate brothers and sisters, and the aged, and the sick. That is always the hitch. I'm sure some of their ideas would actually mitigate the problems for these demographics, and I think Ron Paul even proposes long transitions so as to mitigate the harm to people in these groups while trying to institute his ideas... so... they really are pretty cool people for the most part... just a tad too Darwinian about things for me.

    Can't forget the part about how Darwinism DOES fix all kinds of really awful problems... just too brutally, just way more brutally than is necessary... and if the fucking "liberals" won't fix them, AND THEY HAVE SHOWN THAT THEY WON'T, hell, maybe we should just join the Libertarian party and swallow hard at the scary parts....?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Yes the draft, I was lucky and was able to get into the ANG in Calif. I had a low number when even college didn’t save you. The person who got me in told me one day if more sons of Senators went to war there wouldn’t be wars. He was a Brig. General in the AF and a neighbor in the blue neighborhood were I grew up. He even got me out early, I just wasn’t Military material and they need the spot for a left guard at UCB football team. I was more than happy to say good-by.
    jo6pac

    Yes even my libertarian friends have problems with Ron P. thinks on people rights. This is to bad, I read lew rockwell every day as I move through web some cool health info.

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  7. I almost always enjoy links I follow to Lew Rockwell, but somehow when I try to just go there cold I always find stuff I don't like so much.... Maybe I'll give it another try.

    I think we ought to conscript the SENATORS THEMSELVES and let their kids skate.... :-P

    ReplyDelete

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