http://www.salon.com/2016/05/05/its_not_about_sexism_camille_paglia_on_trump_hillarys_restless_bitterness_and_the_end_of_the_elites/
"Trump has knocked the stilts out from the GOP establishment and crushed the pretensions of a battalion of political commentators on both the Left and Right. Portraying him as a vile racist, illiterate boob, or the end of civilization as we know it hasn’t worked because his growing supporters are genuinely motivated by rational concerns about border security and bad trade deals." Yeah, she comes from the Bernie Sanders left so always dusted in wacky dust, but she gets much right. More below the fold.
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The Left's hatred of Jews chills me to the bone
. . . who can barely contain his desire to lock up the unbeliever, and kill the jew. It is not just a Euro-British problem, this cancer infects the progressive body politic here as well. "As a young boy, I used to think my grandma very strange. In her bedroom she kept a suitcase, packed and ready for use at a moment’s notice. “Just in case,” she’d tell me when I asked where it was that she was always waiting to go to. “You never know when they’ll turn on the Jews. A longer view of history will do that to you. "Should I admit that I am afraid? Because I am. I don’t go about my life in fear. I wouldn’t be writing this or doing my job if I did. But how, quite rationally, can I not be afraid when Jews are being murdered on the streets of Europe simply for being Jews; when anti-Semitic tropes and discourse is becoming part of the mainstream of political debate; and when one of our main political parties is led by a man who does not merely let this fester, but actually describes representatives of terrorist groups as "friends"? If this is the level we have reached today, I fear not just for myself but far more for my children. History shows that when anti-Semitism takes hold it does not wither; it grows. Yes, Britain is a wonderful home to Jews, as it is to all minorities. Yes, we have the full backing of the law and the authorities. But yes, I do look over my shoulder. Wouldn’t you?" It really is different here. We not only allow self defense, we encourage it, and enshrine it into our federal Constitution, and our state Constitutions. Many American's may feel the same way, but they have an additional option of acting as a bulwark against these vicious, hate filled trolls. Remember elections matter. And notice how people in wonderful Euro-socialist governments are so fearful for their safety. They have reason to be, and no ability for self help. How Huma Abedin went from intern to Hillary Clinton's closest confidante . . . the other was a gimp. "In 1996, two young, ambitious women worked at the Clinton White House. One was assigned to the West Wing—the presidential wing—and became known for her stained blue Gap dress, a sordid manifestation of Bill Clinton’s baser appetites. The other served in the East Wing, where the first lady’s offices are situated. This is the story of the second one, whose selfless servility and uncanny knack for predicting what the boss wants have put her closer than almost anyone to the most powerful woman in American politics." This makes Huma sound so normal, so reliable, so efficient. "'She was a very, very religious person—she didn’t smoke, drink or swear, always very polite,” recalls one Clinton friend, who, like most people who spoke to Newsweek, asked not to be named. “A lot of times, Hillary would snap her fingers and go, ‘Gum.’ And Huma would fetch it.” Abed in took her duties so seriously, the source recalled, that when she learned that Clinton had once carried her own bag up a flight of stairs in her aide’s absence, Abedin nearly burst into tears." Then we find out she was none of those things, she is a gimp. What kind of person would intentionally become Hillary Clinton's gimp? 'Ban the Box' Goes to College
. . . from doing everything they can to allow it to become a cesspit of rape, and criminality. "The long-running “Ban the Box” campaign is now gaining ground at colleges and universities. The movement aims to protect job, and now student, applicants from being asked about their criminal histories and was recently bolstered by President Obama, who is taking executive action to ban the practice at federal agencies." Shocking, an in the tank Socialist makes the wrong decision! This will have positive results at university I am sure. What could happen? Can she fix it?
. . . no, and she has no ideas which would even move it towards a fix. "Mrs Clinton is experienced. In an age of extremes she has remained resolutely centrist. Yet, rather than thrilling to the promise of taking the White House or of electing America’s first woman president, many Democrats seem joyless." Experienced? What experience? We think of experience as a positive element in such analysis. But Clinton's experiences are either diaphanous or negative. Her legislative experiences simply do not exist. She did little while in the Senate. Her experiences at State are negative, she is the architect of President Obama's disastrous foreign policy which brought us Libya and the collapse of North, and Central Africa, Syria and the metastasizing cancer that is the European refugee crisis, the new aggressive China as represented by its actions in the South China Sea, and a rampaging Russia terrorizing the former Soviet states from the Baltics, to Georgia, to Ukraine, to the 'stans. "To gauge Mrs Clinton’s programme, start with the Clintonomics that her husband pursued in the mid-1990s. Broadly, it got the big things right by transforming a tax-and-spend party into one that took deficits seriously. Under Bill Clinton, the Democrats made peace with Wall Street and free trade, and agreed to ambitious welfare reform. Thanks to these sensible policies, and the fortuitous tailwind of higher productivity growth, the economy boomed and prosperity was shared." While essentially true, it was Hillary who pushed her husband to the left at the beginning of his Presidency, with her dream of socialized medicine, and Hillary Care. This was a disastrous idea, and one which Americans nearly charged Clinton with the price of the Presidency. But as the Economist infers, Bill changed his position, moved smartly to the center, teamed up with Republicans, and became the free trade, welfare reform, deficit hawk, and yes this re-inflated the Reagan boom, which had been initially charged by tax reform/streamlining, and regulation reform. Hillary is no Bill Clinton, to the contrary, Hillary is the opposite of Bill. Hillary's plan will not take America in a positive direction, her foreign policies will further erode stability in the world. We will need to look elsewhere for answers. The smug style in American liberalism
Kyle Smith helps with some analysis. Liberals embrace the smug life Read Smith first, then if you need, go read the Vox piece. Smug is nearly always a result of living in an echo chamber, without countering opinion. This is a disaster for liberal, and is probably the reason they are unable to simply run the board on most elections. Obama's smug campaign in 2008 was backed up with indifference, dithering, incompetence, and failure. He reprised his smug campaign and was reelected in 2012. Stein's Law states, “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” This will stop once the electorate comes to the understanding that no matter how good the liberal positions sound, the implementation is bollocks. Read the Smith piece, it is worth your time. and Theocracy In 21st-century USA - Cafe Hayek
. . . but we all should, environmentalism, and progressivism are becoming a metastasizing evil religion, which can only end in something ugly, and deadly. Read more below the fold! Enough with the Hillary cult
. . . Clinton voters overlook money lust, shadowy surrogates, sociopathic policy shifts, horrific overseas record. Why? Perhaps the best question this entire election season. Paglia is a good writer, and deep in left field, but nearly always worth your time. She is nothing if not independent, and willing to stake out her own position regardless of political costs to herself. While this happens more commonly on the right, it seldom occurs on the left, so when it does it is very refreshing. We need both parties in our political landscape, each should stand as a significant counterweight to the excesses that happen when the other party is left to run roughshod over politics. This is what happened from 2008 - 2010, and only slightly less from 2010-2012. The Democrat party had carte blanche during those early years, and the results were miserable. The execrable Obamacare is now collapsing under the unchecked weight of its excesses. Most of the other programs were utter failures, miring the nation in a pathetically moribund economic recovery. And seemingly leaving the economy now too exhausted to actually produce. Back to Paglia: "What is it with the Hillary cult? As a lifelong Democrat who will be enthusiastically voting for Bernie Sanders in next week’s Pennsylvania primary, I have trouble understanding the fuzzy rosy filter through which Hillary fans see their champion. So much must be overlooked or discounted—from Hillary’s compulsive money-lust and her brazen indifference to normal rules to her conspiratorial use of shadowy surrogates and her sociopathic shape-shifting in policy positions for momentary expedience. Hillary’s breathtaking lack of concrete achievements or even minimal initiatives over her long public career doesn’t faze her admirers a whit. They have a religious conviction of her essential goodness and blame her blank track record on diabolical sexist obstructionists. When at last week’s debate Hillary crassly blamed President Obama for the disastrous Libyan incursion that she had pushed him into, her acolytes hardly noticed. They don’t give a damn about international affairs—all that matters is transgender bathrooms and instant access to abortion. I’m starting to wonder, given the increasing dysfunction of our democratic institutions, if the Hillary cult isn’t perhaps registering an atavistic longing for monarchy. Or perhaps it’s just a neo-pagan reversion to idolatry, as can be felt in the Little Italy street festival scene of The Godfather, Part II, where devout pedestrians pin money to the statue of San Rocco as it is carried by in procession. There was a strange analogy to that last week, when Sanders supporters satirically showered Hillary’s motorcade with dollar bills as she arrived at George Clooney’s luxe fund-raiser in Los Angeles." As I said, Paglia offers a perspective seldom heard on the left. Read the whole thing. Back to Bad Schools in the Bayou
. . . where progressives place the interests of the powerful and connected above the interests of the poor and young. "If Democrats are so committed to equality and fairness, why do the party’s politicians protect teachers unions over minority students looking for a good education? The latest example is on display in Louisiana, where new Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards is trying to curb school choice. Mr. Edwards this week proposed restrictions on the Louisiana Scholarship Program, which allows low-income students in schools rated by the state as C, D or F to apply for a scholarship to attend a parochial or private school. The initiative started thanks to former Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal and serves more than 7,100 students, almost 90% of whom are minorities." Old white carbuncle moves to protect a powerful union on the backs of poor students. Where are the black race baiters? Oh, right, the old white carbuncle is a progressive who is sharing power with unions, so the race baiters stay away. They become "hear no evil" when one of their own is destroying colored's opportunity. This is so common, and so ugly it takes the breath away. The gov protects his own. Is this really what Louisianian's want from their governor? Reminder: Liberalism Is Working, and Marxism Has Always Failed
. . . and if by "working" one means, "improved the living standards of all, including the poorest." "While socialism remains highly unpopular among the public as a whole, Americans under the age of 30 — who have few or no memories of communism — respond to it favorably. The Bernie Sanders campaign has introduced once-verboten questions about the market system into Democratic Party politics — a challenge Hillary Clinton has beaten back by relying on the residual loyalties of her base rather than mounting a frontal ideological challenge. Meanwhile, Jacobin magazine has given long-marginalized Marxist ideas new force among progressive intellectuals. It seems impossible at the current moment to imagine Marxists exercising power at the national level. But it also seemed impossible to imagine New Deal–hating conservatives — then just a faction within a party — exercising national-scale power after their standard-bearer was routed in the 1964 elections. Yet, a mere 16 years later, their time had arrived. So, on the theory that it’s never too early to start planning the counterrevolution, it is worth reiterating that Marxism is terrible." Americans, insulated from the bloody horror of Marxism, and the crushing hell of Socialism, have little experience, and no understanding. Instead they hear, the pied pipers of the Academe waxing wonderful about these two attempts to return to feudalism. Sanders is not an independent thinker, he is an acolyte of something he does not vaguely understand. "Sanders’s success does not reflect any Marxist tendency. It does, however, reflect a generalized hunger for radical solutions, discontent with the Obama administration’s pace of progress, and a generational weakening of the Democratic Party’s identification with liberalism over socialism. It has never been exactly clear what Sanders means when he calls himself “socialist.” Years ago, he supported the Socialist Workers Party, a Marxist group that favored the nationalization of industry. Today he endorses a “revolution” in metaphorical rather than literal terms, and holds up Denmark as the closest thing to a real-world model for his ideas. But, while “socialism” has meant different things throughout history, Denmark is not really a socialist economy. As Jonathan Cohn explained, it combines generous welfare benefits and high-quality public infrastructure with highly flexible labor markets — an amped-up version of what left-wing critics derisively call “neoliberalism.” While Denmark’s success suggests that a modern economy can afford to fund more generous social benefits, it does not reveal an alternative to the market system. It is on politics, not economics, where the influence of Marxist ideas has been most keenly felt. Enough time has passed since the demise of the Soviet Union to allow Marxist models to thrive without answering for communist regimes. In his fascinating profile of Jacobin, Dylan Matthews notes, “The magazine is not going to defend Stalin's collectivizations or Mao's Great Leap Forward or really any other aspect of ‘actually existing communism.’” But the fact that every communist country in world history quickly turned into a repressive nightmare is kind of important." Pish posh, what are a few million bloody corpses here or there? You are missing the bigger picture. This will allow progressives to feel really good about themselves, and that is surely more important that a few million pikers dying horrible deaths in the Cambodian Killing Fields, or China's starving fields, or the grand Russian steppe! "Many Marxist theorists have long attempted to rescue their theory from its real-world adherents by attributing its failures to idiosyncratic personal flaws of the leaders who took power (Lenin, Stalin, Mao … ). But the same patterns have replicated themselves in enough governments under enough leaders to make it perfectly obvious that the flaw rests in the theory itself. Marxist governments trample on individual rights because Marxist theory does not care about individual rights. Marxism is a theory of class justice. The only political rights it respects are those exercised by members of the oppressed class, with different left-wing ideological strands defining those classes in economic, racial, or gender terms, or sometimes all at once. Unlike liberalism, which sees rights as a positive-sum good that can expand or contract for society as a whole, Marxists (and other left-wing critics of liberalism) think of political rights as a zero-sum conflict. Either they are exercised on behalf of oppression or against it. Any Marxist government immediately sets about snuffing out the political rights of parties or ideas deemed reactionary (a category that also inevitably expands to describe any challenge to the powers that be). Repression is woven into Marxism’s ideological fabric. Political correctness borrows its illiberal model of political discourse from Marxism, and it has mostly played itself out on university campuses and other enclaves where the left is able to impose political hegemony. (This is why some liberals who don’t agree with political correctness, but also don’t want to criticize it, dismiss it as nothing more than harmless college prankery.) Just this week, Emory University’s president promised to use security cameras to track down and prosecute students who wrote “Trump” in chalk — chalking being a normally acceptable medium for sloganeering — after student activists pronounced the word a threat to their safety." It seems apropos that Marxism would retain some adherents here in America, while elsewhere, like Russia, China, Cuba, and even Venezuela it is in full retreat, an antiquated, if homicidal belief. "The efforts to shut down Trump reflect the growing influence of Marxian politics, and these ideas merit study. A Jacobin column defends “impair[ing] the circulation of Trump’s hate-filled message.” What about free speech? Well: Free speech, while an indispensable principle of democracy, is not an abstract value. It is carried out in the context of power disparities, and has real effects on peoples’ lives. We can defend freedom of speech — particularly from state crackdowns — while also resolutely opposing speech that scapegoats the most vulnerable and oppressed people in our society. Free speech is for people on the wrong end of “power disparities” — which is to say, the oppressed and their allies, or, put more bluntly, the left." Exactly. The left is an unalloyed good, everyone else is not and does not deserve, rights like free speech, or if one burrows down to it, human rights. How long before these depraved zombies begin agitating for heads? "In the meantime, obviously, Trump poses a far more dire danger than his would-be censors. But it is important not to succumb to the panic that the far left is inculcating around Trump. Trump would threaten American democracy if elected, but all evidence suggests his election is highly unlikely." Right! So riddle me this Batman, how is a gassy windbag somehow a more dire threat than a group of people who represent a political movement which has in EVERY incarnation, resulted in the democide of a hundred million innocents? What exactly can this gassy windbag do, magic? Is he a Gozer worshiper who will open a cleft from our universe to another more horrible universe? Will he require all men wear hair exactly like his? We find out why our intrepid correspondent is apoplectic about Trump in his last graph. "The popular, sitting liberal president has enacted the most important egalitarian social reforms in half a century, including higher taxes on the rich, lower taxes on the poor, and significant new income transfers to poor and working-class Americans through health-care reform and other measures. All of this has happened without the alliance with white supremacy that compromised the New Deal, or the disastrous war that accompanied the Great Society. The case for democratic, pluralistic, incremental, market-friendly governance rooted in empiricism — i.e., liberalism — has never been stronger than now. What an odd time to abandon a successful program for an ideology that has failed everywhere it has been tried." He thinks Obama is great, and liberal. But mostly Obama has used blunt force trauma, executive action, to achieve his goals. This is only one step from dissolving Congress altogether and doing government naked, er, as dictator. Obama's great actions with Congress were a few cash for clunker like stimulus deals, failures all, Obamacare, a failure, and successful Republican derivative actions like free trade agreements. Loving this guy for his liberalism is a bit crazy, since he has little interest in liberalism, and much interest but no skill in unilateral action. Obama is like a W. Clinton lite. Clinton attempted to convert healthcare to a government agency, failed, and nearly lost the Presidency. He realized his mistake, listening to his wife, cut her from power, and began to implement Republican reforms like welfare reform, and free trade deals. Pretty much all of his successes were Republican derived, and all of his failures were Democrat derived. While Trump is not particularly favorable to liberalism, this is because he is essentially a center left progressive who is vehemently anti-immigration. His policies are the same as Hillary's but with the anti-immigrant element. Trump is uncontrollable, while Hillary will follow the playbook to a T. And there is the risk Trump could blow up all of American politics, and neither establishment likes that idea. Now it seems clear, Trump is Hillary, and our intrepid correspondent is likely fearful that once Trumps platform is known, it will appeal to many Democrats, and Hillay, the unlikable, will have great difficulty retaining these Democrats. Here is a nice article on liberalism versus progressivism. Hillary, Sanders, and Trump are all progressives. I am a liberal, classical liberal to be correct. liberal versus progressive |
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