Presidential Hopeful ...

[brzna]

What do you expect him to do? Support gay marrige?! He's already being called a "n-word" -- is it not enough?! Do you really think he could be called a "n-word fag" and still win?!

We expect him to either be consistent or drop out of the race.

[mansion]

At Punahou (high school) obama tried drugs and let his grades slip in his final years of high school. Teachers and fellow students at Punahou say that Obama wasn't a straight-A student, but they had high expectations for him. One of his teachers, Kusunoki, who has taught at Punahou for 33 years, adds that "[he] was very gifted, and I knew he'd do great things. But this well? On this stage? I never expected that."

And to think this high school is not in the mainland USA but in Hawaii!!

Calm down people! Even if Obama becomes President it does not mean America will stop to be the stinky female dog we are used to!

The person of the US president is an irrelevance. The totalitarianism prevailing in America and taking hold in its satellites around the world has learned important lessons from the failed experiments of the past. The first of these lessons is that the greatest liability to the survival of a regime is a strong and erratic leader. A point often made in history classes is that Hitler should have stopped at Kiev instead of thinning out his eastern front to move on toward Moscow. Thus without Hitler's deranged ambitions, the Third Reich might really have lasted a thousand years. Similarly, if Stalin had kept his genocidal ambitions in check, the Soviet Union might have continued to enjoy its initial popularity among sections of the West and at home.

With these examples in mind, the leader has been eliminated as a factor in US politics. The US has long been governed, not by its people, but by interests that are happy to remain largely anonymous, do not rely on individuals for their hold on power, and are recognizable in public mainly by a soothing corporate blue. Americans often seem baffled that others fail to admire their system of government. They know after all that in the US there exists a lively culture of debate, where the whole lunatic spectrum of opinion can find a platform of one kind or another (though at the same time the difference between the political parties it is actually possible to elect is vanishingly small).

We have a vibrant and largely unchecked artistic community. We have the First Amendment. Even Greg Palast, at the end of his expose of corporate power "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy," found himself heartened by the American culture of customer complaint, the notion that you have enforceable rights and can sue for them in a court of law. This is, after all, the nation that gave us the concept of "animal rights." Hollywood is happy to feed this perception by producing blockbusters like "Erin Brockovitch" and "The Insider," where ordinary people take on corporations and win, in other words, films which, by seeming to challenge, actually affirm the existing order.

The reason for all this is that the new totalitarianism has learned a second lesson from its heavy-handed predecessors. If artists and intellectuals were able to do precisely nothing about Hitler or Stalin or any of the legion of tin-pot dictators around the world, it follows that you might as well have freedom of expression. In the new totalitarian system, people can say whatever they like, and it makes absolutely no difference. The war on Iraq is only one example among many of a supposedly sovereign public completely powerless in the face of a government bent on a course of action.

That this should suprise some people outside America is odd. Proponents of the enlightened self-interest of nations like the late Alan Clark MP -- who argued that it would have been better for Britain's imperial status if it had signed a peace with Hitler in 1941 -- have long held that nations do not have morals. They have interests. Thus the idea clogging up the editorial pages of American papers that people ought to be grateful to the U.S. is childish. Alliances are formed where the interests of nations coincide or where one nation expects to take advantage of another. In other words, America has never been a moral guardian to the rest of the world, and it would be peculiar to expect it to be. It has simply more astutely safeguarded its interests, except where it has allowed its interests to become distorted in countries like Vietnam. But these blunders have long been rectified.

The neo-conservative writer P.J.O'Rourke some years ago said the Americans had won the Vietnam war, and so they have -- if not the one they were fighting. Vietnam is now in all but name a busy capitalist country, and no doubt the better for it as far as its long-suffering people are concerned. On the whole, however, annexation by mostly carrot an a little stick has worked best, and the U.S. has avoided the limitless aggression that proved the downfall of old-style regimes. Many more obvious U.S. satellites in Southeast Asia and elsewhere have benefited from the ties that bind them and are evolving comparable pseudodemocratic systems. The middle class subjects of these satellites would be foolish to prefer their country to be differently aligned, and to the slum-dwellers it doesn't matter either way. This practically guarantees a stable dependency on the motherland, which an invasion could never have achieved.

The most important lesson to the new totalitarianism, then, comes from ancient Rome, and is simply that people sufficiently supplied with bread and games will put up with anything. It may seem strange that a system that has been working so well both at home and abroad should so blatantly rattle and saber and polish the jackboot, but for this we may have to thank Al-Qaeda. In "Blowback", his study of American imperialism, Chalmers Johnson points out that the invention of terrorists is among other things to provoke a disproportionate reaction in the enemy and goad it into revealing itself as the brute it is, thereby forfeiting public sympathy.

Alternatively, it could be that the fruits of a takeover of Iraq are too juicy to pass up and difficult to get hold of by any other means. In either case, this will be a passing phase, and the current preponderance of stick in U.S. international policy will in good time make way for more ample carrot. The question remains whether overall there is anything wrong with an endlessly adaptable, stable system of world government that keeps the majority of its subjects happy or at least comfortable. And once the technology has solved the problem of cheap labor, ther will be nothing wrong with it. Only we mustn't call it democracy.

[wafrica22]

Calm down people! Even if Obama becomes President it does not mean America will stop to be the stinky female dog we are used to!

The person of the US president is an irrelevance. The totalitarianism prevailing in America and taking hold in its satellites around the world has learned important lessons from the failed experiments of the past. The first of these lessons is that the greatest liability to the survival of a regime is a strong and erratic leader. A point often made in history classes is that Hitler should have stopped at Kiev instead of thinning out his eastern front to move on toward Moscow. Thus without Hitler's deranged ambitions, the Third Reich might really have lasted a thousand years. Similarly, if Stalin had kept his genocidal ambitions in check, the Soviet Union might have continued to enjoy its initial popularity among sections of the West and at home.

With these examples in mind, the leader has been eliminated as a factor in US politics. The US has long been governed, not by its people, but by interests that are happy to remain largely anonymous, do not rely on individuals for their hold on power, and are recognizable in public mainly by a soothing corporate blue. Americans often seem baffled that others fail to admire their system of government. They know after all that in the US there exists a lively culture of debate, where the whole lunatic spectrum of opinion can find a platform of one kind or another (though at the same time the difference between the political parties it is actually possible to elect is vanishingly small).

We have a vibrant and largely unchecked artistic community. We have the First Amendment. Even Greg Palast, at the end of his expose of corporate power "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy," found himself heartened by the American culture of customer complaint, the notion that you have enforceable rights and can sue for them in a court of law. This is, after all, the nation that gave us the concept of "animal rights." Hollywood is happy to feed this perception by producing blockbusters like "Erin Brockovitch" and "The Insider," where ordinary people take on corporations and win, in other words, films which, by seeming to challenge, actually affirm the existing order.

The reason for all this is that the new totalitarianism has learned a second lesson from its heavy-handed predecessors. If artists and intellectuals were able to do precisely nothing about Hitler or Stalin or any of the legion of tin-pot dictators around the world, it follows that you might as well have freedom of expression. In the new totalitarian system, people can say whatever they like, and it makes absolutely no difference. The war on Iraq is only one example among many of a supposedly sovereign public completely powerless in the face of a government bent on a course of action.

That this should suprise some people outside America is odd. Proponents of the enlightened self-interest of nations like the late Alan Clark MP -- who argued that it would have been better for Britain's imperial status if it had signed a peace with Hitler in 1941 -- have long held that nations do not have morals. They have interests. Thus the idea clogging up the editorial pages of American papers that people ought to be grateful to the U.S. is childish. Alliances are formed where the interests of nations coincide or where one nation expects to take advantage of another. In other words, America has never been a moral guardian to the rest of the world, and it would be peculiar to expect it to be. It has simply more astutely safeguarded its interests, except where it has allowed its interests to become distorted in countries like Vietnam. But these blunders have long been rectified.

The neo-conservative writer P.J.O'Rourke some years ago said the Americans had won the Vietnam war, and so they have -- if not the one they were fighting. Vietnam is now in all but name a busy capitalist country, and no doubt the better for it as far as its long-suffering people are concerned. On the whole, however, annexation by mostly carrot an a little stick has worked best, and the U.S. has avoided the limitless aggression that proved the downfall of old-style regimes. Many more obvious U.S. satellites in Southeast Asia and elsewhere have benefited from the ties that bind them and are evolving comparable pseudodemocratic systems. The middle class subjects of these satellites would be foolish to prefer their country to be differently aligned, and to the slum-dwellers it doesn't matter either way. This practically guarantees a stable dependency on the motherland, which an invasion could never have achieved.

The most important lesson to the new totalitarianism, then, comes from ancient Rome, and is simply that people sufficiently supplied with bread and games will put up with anything. It may seem strange that a system that has been working so well both at home and abroad should so blatantly rattle and saber and polish the jackboot, but for this we may have to thank Al-Qaeda. In "Blowback", his study of American imperialism, Chalmers Johnson points out that the invention of terrorists is among other things to provoke a disproportionate reaction in the enemy and goad it into revealing itself as the brute it is, thereby forfeiting public sympathy.

Alternatively, it could be that the fruits of a takeover of Iraq are too juicy to pass up and difficult to get hold of by any other means. In either case, this will be a passing phase, and the current preponderance of stick in U.S. international policy will in good time make way for more ample carrot. The question remains whether overall there is anything wrong with an endlessly adaptable, stable system of world government that keeps the majority of its subjects happy or at least comfortable. And once the technology has solved the problem of cheap labor, ther will be nothing wrong with it. Only we mustn't call it democracy.

I can agree with this! The military and intelligence apparatus has taken over the reigns of domestic and foreign policy in close consultation with Wall Street, the Texas oil conglomerates and the military industrial complex. With key decisions taken behind closed doors at the CIA and the Pentagon, civilian political institutions including the President and the US Congress increasingly play the role of a façade.

In other words, US policies do not emanate from the institutions of civilian government (i.e. the Legislature and Executive). They exist because the US military-intelligence apparatus -- and the various powers behind it -- tend to override the institutions of civilian government in setting agendas. In this process, the Commander-in-Chief, largely responds to the instructions of key advisers. While the illusion of a functioning democracy prevails in the eyes of public opinion, the US president has become a mere public relations figurehead, visibly with little understanding of key policy issues.

[lauschool]

I can agree with this! The military and intelligence apparatus has taken over the reigns of domestic and foreign policy in close consultation with Wall Street, the Texas oil conglomerates and the military industrial complex. With key decisions taken behind closed doors at the CIA and the Pentagon, civilian political institutions including the President and the US Congress increasingly play the role of a façade.

In other words, US policies do not emanate from the institutions of civilian government (i.e. the Legislature and Executive). They exist because the US military-intelligence apparatus -- and the various powers behind it -- tend to override the institutions of civilian government in setting agendas. In this process, the Commander-in-Chief, largely responds to the instructions of key advisers. While the illusion of a functioning democracy prevails in the eyes of public opinion, the US president has become a mere public relations figurehead, visibly with little understanding of key policy issues.

You're off the money here! As the poster you quoted was! You two must be on Obama's payroll! The President of the U.S. is the most powerful man on earth.

[KDK]

What do you expect him to do? Support gay marrige?! He's already being called a "n-word" -- is it not enough?! Do you really think he could be called a "n-word fag" and still win?!

We expect him to either be consistent or drop out of the race.

There is no such thing as "consistency" when it comes to Democrats. The Left does not disagree with the Right intellectually ... with few exceptions, they are virtually incapable of intellectual disagreement. The Left disagrees *emotionally*. Really, this is a psychological and not ideological phenomenon: it is a mass neurosis of sorts. When millions of people cling to worldviews which have failed for the last 80 years, something is wrong. When people celebrate degeneration in defense of freedom of speech, there is something wrong. When people elevate the murder of innocent unborn children to a "right" but simultaneously fight against the application of capital punishment for heinous crimes, something is wrong. Liberalism is so full of logical and factual contradictions that one wonders how a rational person can subscribe to such a worldview. The mind of the liberal is literally shut off to logic and facts.

Liberalism (or what it has come to connote), is really the result of decades of emotional conditioning which has left those conditioned without the faculty of critical thought.  Certainly those emotions are there to begin with. Humans are animals. It is the taming of our base animalistic impulses that makes civilization possible. When those taming influences are supplanted by devices that condition and reinforce the animalistic impulses, civilization crumbles. The point here is that what has happened over the last 40 years is that our consumption of entertainment -- television primarily, movies secondarily, and in some cases novels -- has had the negative effect of conditioning either by design or inadvertently, emotions and worldviews inconsistent with reality. These condititioned fantasy and utopian worldviews can result in societal collapse. Cognitive dissonance is but one vehicle in the war of the mind.

Cults can easily be explained in terms of cognitive dissonance. All inconsistent cognitions are dealt with by violence. In a cult, inconsistent cognitions are dealt with by shunning, by starving, by confinement, etc. Liberalism does the same thing! Political Correctness, the illegitimate step-child of liberalism, is cult-like in its establishment of correct speech. This is what cults do ... they prohibit certain words and discussion of certain topics. 

The Left is essentially a "cult of cognitive dissonance."

[The Merchant of Venice]

In his first autobiographical book, "Dreams From My Father," Obama talks of growing up happily racially unaware. "That my father looked nothing like the people around me barely registered in my mind," he wrote.

Lynn Sweet, the savvy Chicago political columnist who's been tracking Obama's rise, called into question Obama's use of composite characters and made-up names in his highly praised autobiography. Her column on the subject was headlined "Obama's Book: What's Real, What's Not."

"I was dismayed," wrote Sweet, "at what I found when I read Dreams from My Father. Composite characters. Changed names ... Except for public figures and his family, it is impossible to know who is real and who is not." Colorful characters populate the Chicago chapters: Smitty the barber, LaTisha, the part-time manicurist, Angela, Ruby, Mrs. Turner and one Rafiq al Shabazz. Who they really are, or if they are composites, you would not know from reading the book.

[lou]

is kdk flame bait? i really can't tell, but by how ridiculous his post is, i have to assume that it is flame.

[f r i e d m a n]

[b e c k]

LOL friedman, I know what ya mean!

[abu]

[...] And if the high didn't solve whatever it was that was getting you down, it could at least help you laugh at the world's ongoing folly and see through all the hypocrisy and bull and cheap moralism.

[...]

Well, looks like the highs solved some issues that were getting him down