Orwell accurately describes the current whinges of the Right

[mofangongren]

Hobbes, thanks for your research! With your results, it would seem fair to say that Bush shows up on the internet about twice as much as Moore. Thus, any searches that vary significantly from that ratio could indicate a correlation worthy of further examination!

We should also get into some more qualitative examination. For example, while “George Bush” + “chimp” yields 74,000 to the mere 45,500 garnered from a search of “Michael Moore” + “chimp”, we should note that most of the latter search results appear to involve direct references to Bush as a “chimp”.

[TainanCowboy]

@skeptic yank

FWIW: one of my mentors back in uni. was a retired naval officer and knew burdick and/or levin. the admiral had it from the author that the book THE UGLY American wasa written to earn money. it was a story, a fabrication and astonishment was to be found that it was taken as factual/semi-factual all these years later.

Interesting.
In my 30+ years of being aware of this book I have never heard of it referred to as anything other than a fiction novel. And as far as earning money, it appears to still be in print and still earning royalties!

[Vay]

[quote=“Tainan Cowboy”]The facts are that the so-called left, or liberal ‘wing’, or Democratic Party has historically been the party of exclusion for the so-called “servants” you may be alluding to. Minorities, or the “servants” have consistently been used as a convienent tool by the Demo party. Trotted out and showcased for votes. Token members selected for favours. Programs established and codified to assure their enslavement to the Gov’t $$'s while a subculture of dependency extends to 2nd & 3rd generations.

The pathways of education, capitalism, entrepeneurship and self accountability are what has worked the best for the “servant” class, as it has for all who follow it. And this has been the course espoused by those you name. Personally I am not a big fan of Hannity, IMO he is a lightweight who may, or may not develop into more political relevance. And I prefer Laura Ingraham, among others, over Coulter. But they are sparking interest and reactions with their messages.
[/quote]

It’s a bit lazy to quote myself, I realize, but my time to spend on these discussions is brief, so I’ll tell you what I told Fred in another thread:

[quote=“Vay”]You cheap-labor conservatives seem to think that we all used to live in this Ayn Randian paradise which went according to the “natural order of things” (read that impersonal market forces) where everyone took responsibility for his own fate and there was no poverty or injustice.

Then along came these insidious STATISTS. They had a brilliant idea: let’s implement some government programs to render everyone dependent, bilk the people of their capital, and concentrate power in government hands! Naturally, the result was that the economy went to shit, the overall quality of life diminished, and everyone lost their their sense of personal responsibility (Now there’s an important Republican buzz-word!)

This view of reality, of course, totaly overlooks the fact that the largest beneficiaries of all government built infrastructure, including hydroelectric dams, railroads, air traffic control systems, and even roads and schools, are the corporations who buy power, transport goods by rail and over the roads, and employ workers educated at public expense. They are the primary beneficiaries of the banking system, of Federal Reserve efforts to stabilize the currency, and of the regulation of securities which create confidence in the financial markets.

But guys like Fred are oblivious to all this government spending, government infrastructure, and government regulation that directly benefits American corporations. They only see the government spending that helps the wage earner – and hypocritically claim that the “wage earner” should “stand on his own two feet” – as if their side does!" [/quote]

To that, let me add this:
What the conservatives really mean by "personal responsibility"is “blame”. If you have nothing, and can accumulate nothing, it’s your own fault. This is how the conservative washes his hands of the poverty and exploitation inevitable in a total unregulated economic environment. It isn’t his fault, it is “impersonal market forces”. It is the “natural order” of things – which government has no business correcting, according to him.

This, as I pointed out before, totally overlooks all of the laws, institutions and government created infrastructure that benefits the wealthy. First on the list of these is the corporation itself. Corporations exist because state law creates their possibility. State laws give them a benefit no partnership enjoys: limited liability for investors. They were and are a government created means to encourage investment in large scale industrial enterprises.

They amount to “organized capital”, and have grown into institutions so large, many have revenues that exceed the Gross Domestic Product of most third world nations. They obviously create an imbalance of economic power between those who hold capital on the one hand, and wage earners on the other.

Add to that the rapid movement of capital made possible by technology, and you have an even more uneven playing field. That rapid movement of course, is made possible by computers – developed with government subsidies and assistance – over communications networks built by government subsidy.

Now please, tell me you think average Joe worker-dude has the same “liberty” to succeed as a guy like, um, say, George W. Bush. Let’s analyze:

Dubya went to prep school. Joe went to the public high school. Dubya went to Yale ahead of someone with better credentials because he had family connections. Dubya had wealthy friends, through family, skull and bones etc, who bankrolled his oil drilling business. Ask some of his friends to bankroll your oil business. Let me know if they stop laughing before their bodyguards throw you out. Even if you managed to persuade an investor to bankroll some enterprise, you’re going to have exactly one shot. If you lose, you won’t be getting a second chance. Dubya, on the other hand, went broke, and then his friends bankrolled him again, before finally getting him a one percent share of the Texas Rangers.

See how it works? People with money help each other out. They don’t help out people who don’t have any. Many cheap-labor conservatives don’t want to help out the destitute at all. They say government assistance to people will make them dependent. They say it breeds inefficiency and laziness (Hmmm, wonder why that didn’t apply in W’s case!) They say that a harsh, unregulated social environment breeds market discipline by rewarding the most resourceful and competitive. Some extreme cheap-labor conservatives don’t even believe in public education. They say it is the family’s responsibility. If your family can’t afford to send you to school, well, that’s not their problem.

Of course, wealthy elites shower their own with benefits and enjoy a plethora of government benefits and services. They know the value of education; that’s why they keep expensive private schools like Andover in business. In fact, they do everything they can to give their own children every advantage money can buy, because they absolutely understand the value of a head start in the fiercely competitive social jungle they have created. They talk about “free competition”, but they actually fear this very thing, and do what they can to make the playing field as unequal as they can. Then they tell the wage earner that his position is his fault and that he just needs to work harder in their factory. He needs to be more disciplined and thrifty if he wants to get ahead!

…

As to giving concrete examples of how Orwell’s quote applies to the right, sorry, I’m not making a thesis statement here. I’m giving my gut response to reading that selection, which was, “Jeez, if Fred, Flipper, Ann Coulter, Limbaugh and the gang had been sitting in that room, this is what they’d have been talking about”. You know, Liberal media causing the decline of moral standards, people not knowing their place and all that.

Because let’s face it: the people in that scene in that room were, say 80-100 years ago, what you’d have called “conservatives”. The fact that nowadays you guys have prettied up your language because society doesn’t stand for such feudalistic, hierarchical, “Great Chain of Being” notions anymore doesn’t change the fact.

[ImaniOU]

Hear, hear, Vay.

[MaPoSquid]

@TainanCowboy

[quote=“skeptic yank”]FWIW: one of my mentors back in uni. was a retired naval officer and knew burdick and/or levin. the admiral had it from the author that the book THE UGLY American wasa written to earn money. it was a story, a fabrication and astonishment was to be found that it was taken as factual/semi-factual all these years later.

Interesting.
In my 30+ years of being aware of this book I have never heard of it referred to as anything other than a fiction novel. And as far as earning money, it appears to still be in print and still earning royalties![/quote]
Oh my. Imagine that! A book being written for the purpose of making money. Gasp, horrors, what is this world coming to?!?!?

[mofangongren]

Vay –

Wow. :bravo: I’m not against getting wealthy, but I do know it’s a pretty much a self-sustaining club. Beyond the willingness for these guys to invest large amounts into each other you can get into the access issues with government. Much though there’s bellyaching about the federal government all the time from the usual right-wing choir, the fact is that if you want the U.S. government to go to bat for the industry you dominate and, say, stick a few companies on the Special 301 lists, you can do it only if you’re rich and have access. Being a poor schmuck simply doesn’t get your problems solved.

There’s probably some point where you 1) have enough money that you can donate sizeable sums and thus get politicians to listen to you; 2) rise to a level of prominence within an industry to the point where you can get other people to listen to you; and 3) sit on enough of the right charitable, educational and other boards that you simply move in the right circles. At that point, you’ve gone “over the hump” and pretty much life is much smoother sailing. The funny thing is that 1 and 3 can be pretty much inherited … and 2 can happen because of 1 and 3.

[Chewycorns]

[quote=“Vay”][quote=“Tainan Cowboy”]The facts are that the so-called left, or liberal ‘wing’, or Democratic Party has historically been the party of exclusion for the so-called “servants” you may be alluding to. Minorities, or the “servants” have consistently been used as a convienent tool by the Demo party. Trotted out and showcased for votes. Token members selected for favours. Programs established and codified to assure their enslavement to the Gov’t $$'s while a subculture of dependency extends to 2nd & 3rd generations.

The pathways of education, capitalism, entrepeneurship and self accountability are what has worked the best for the “servant” class, as it has for all who follow it. And this has been the course espoused by those you name. Personally I am not a big fan of Hannity, IMO he is a lightweight who may, or may not develop into more political relevance. And I prefer Laura Ingraham, among others, over Coulter. But they are sparking interest and reactions with their messages.
[/quote]

It’s a bit lazy to quote myself, I realize, but my time to spend on these discussions is brief, so I’ll tell you what I told Fred in another thread:

[quote=“Vay”]You cheap-labor conservatives seem to think that we all used to live in this Ayn Randian paradise which went according to the “natural order of things” (read that impersonal market forces) where everyone took responsibility for his own fate and there was no poverty or injustice.

Then along came these insidious STATISTS. They had a brilliant idea: let’s implement some government programs to render everyone dependent, bilk the people of their capital, and concentrate power in government hands! Naturally, the result was that the economy went to shit, the overall quality of life diminished, and everyone lost their their sense of personal responsibility (Now there’s an important Republican buzz-word!)

This view of reality, of course, totaly overlooks the fact that the largest beneficiaries of all government built infrastructure, including hydroelectric dams, railroads, air traffic control systems, and even roads and schools, are the corporations who buy power, transport goods by rail and over the roads, and employ workers educated at public expense. They are the primary beneficiaries of the banking system, of Federal Reserve efforts to stabilize the currency, and of the regulation of securities which create confidence in the financial markets.

But guys like Fred are oblivious to all this government spending, government infrastructure, and government regulation that directly benefits American corporations. They only see the government spending that helps the wage earner – and hypocritically claim that the “wage earner” should “stand on his own two feet” – as if their side does!" [/quote]

To that, let me add this:
What the conservatives really mean by "personal responsibility"is “blame”. If you have nothing, and can accumulate nothing, it’s your own fault. This is how the conservative washes his hands of the poverty and exploitation inevitable in a total unregulated economic environment. It isn’t his fault, it is “impersonal market forces”. It is the “natural order” of things – which government has no business correcting, according to him.

This, as I pointed out before, totally overlooks all of the laws, institutions and government created infrastructure that benefits the wealthy. First on the list of these is the corporation itself. Corporations exist because state law creates their possibility. State laws give them a benefit no partnership enjoys: limited liability for investors. They were and are a government created means to encourage investment in large scale industrial enterprises.

They amount to “organized capital”, and have grown into institutions so large, many have revenues that exceed the Gross Domestic Product of most third world nations. They obviously create an imbalance of economic power between those who hold capital on the one hand, and wage earners on the other.

Add to that the rapid movement of capital made possible by technology, and you have an even more uneven playing field. That rapid movement of course, is made possible by computers – developed with government subsidies and assistance – over communications networks built by government subsidy.

Now please, tell me you think average Joe worker-dude has the same “liberty” to succeed as a guy like, um, say, George W. Bush. Let’s analyze:

Dubya went to prep school. Joe went to the public high school. Dubya went to Yale ahead of someone with better credentials because he had family connections. Dubya had wealthy friends, through family, skull and bones etc, who bankrolled his oil drilling business. Ask some of his friends to bankroll your oil business. Let me know if they stop laughing before their bodyguards throw you out. Even if you managed to persuade an investor to bankroll some enterprise, you’re going to have exactly one shot. If you lose, you won’t be getting a second chance. Dubya, on the other hand, went broke, and then his friends bankrolled him again, before finally getting him a one percent share of the Texas Rangers.

See how it works? People with money help each other out. They don’t help out people who don’t have any. Many cheap-labor conservatives don’t want to help out the destitute at all. They say government assistance to people will make them dependent. They say it breeds inefficiency and laziness (Hmmm, wonder why that didn’t apply in W’s case!) They say that a harsh, unregulated social environment breeds market discipline by rewarding the most resourceful and competitive. Some extreme cheap-labor conservatives don’t even believe in public education. They say it is the family’s responsibility. If your family can’t afford to send you to school, well, that’s not their problem.

Of course, wealthy elites shower their own with benefits and enjoy a plethora of government benefits and services. They know the value of education; that’s why they keep expensive private schools like Andover in business. In fact, they do everything they can to give their own children every advantage money can buy, because they absolutely understand the value of a head start in the fiercely competitive social jungle they have created. They talk about “free competition”, but they actually fear this very thing, and do what they can to make the playing field as unequal as they can. Then they tell the wage earner that his position is his fault and that he just needs to work harder in their factory. He needs to be more disciplined and thrifty if he wants to get ahead!

…

As to giving concrete examples of how Orwell’s quote applies to the right, sorry, I’m not making a thesis statement here. I’m giving my gut response to reading that selection, which was, “Jeez, if Fred, Flipper, Ann Coulter, Limbaugh and the gang had been sitting in that room, this is what they’d have been talking about”. You know, Liberal media causing the decline of moral standards, people not knowing their place and all that.

Because let’s face it: the people in that scene in that room were, say 80-100 years ago, what you’d have called “conservatives”. The fact that nowadays you guys have prettied up your language because society doesn’t stand for such feudalistic, hierarchical, “Great Chain of Being” notions anymore doesn’t change the fact.[/quote]

Kerry went to prep school. Joe went to the public high school. Kerry went to Yale ahead of someone with better credentials because he has

[fred_smith]

Gosh, then if you don’t mind please explain to me the following conundrum.

Blacks and Puerto Ricans and poor Whites qualified and applied for welfare in great numbers during the latter part of the 1960s through 1996 welfare reform. During that time, single-parent families, poverty rates among these groups and unemployment increased as did the number of children, drug and alcohol abuse and educational standards fell. Therefore, we must assume that:

a. racism was clearly involved, er except for the Puerto Ricans who are 96 percent White and the poor whites, um…

b. arrogant snobbery was clearly involved!!! except that during the same time even poorer newly arrived immigrants from Asia and Europe and even some parts of Africa like Ethiopia and Eritrea arrived and managed to raise themselves up to quite a nice income and status within 20 years.

c. Republicans were to blame for unfairly targeting and humiliating these groups!!! which lowered their self-esteem!!! ah, but why then when the Republicans had finally won and welfare reform was instituted did all these negative variables miraculously reverse themselves?

d. Bush was to blame!!! even though he was not in office, it was like a telepathic time distortion thing. (keep smoking whatever you are and remain blissfully “happy.”)

So, here we have the evil Republicans who don’t give a shit about anyone doing more good than the caring Democrats whose policies resulted in higher poverty, unemployment, drug-abuse, single-parent-family rates and lowered educational standards. See those greedy asshole Republicans are trying to keep others down.

Then, remember that most of the wealthiest Americans at present (2/3rds) are self-made. Whoops. How did that happen? Compare this with Europe and its wonderful socialist economies and see how wealth manages to remain concentrated among an elite at the top. How to explain this apparent glaring inconsistency in Vay’s otherwise (cough cough) brilliant argument well at least in terms of the wonderfully “correct” feelings and that should count for more than actual rational thought surely. He felt it was the right thing to do, he meant well, he had the best of intentions, it should not matter what actually happened right?

Yeah and tell me about all those airports and roads and railways the government has built and how good that is for society. Right. That is why the allot ment of funds is far more inefficient than when these were built privately and it requires much more in taxes to support and build these things. Just look at West Virginia and all those lovely but actually unnneeded highways, and bridges and tunnels and rest stops that that lovely Democrat Byrd has built. Gotta love him for all that patronage. Pity that is seems more like a Third World banana republic than a first world developed nation but he meant well, he did something for HIS people.

Finally, why are we still running Amtrak and the Post Office which lose billions between them? Why is it that we support the Post office at the expense of other job-creating entities like FedEx, DHL, UPS? Hmmm? Why is that? Why is it that a postal worker deserves to retire after 20 to 25 years of hard work? but someone in the private sector has to wait until they are 65 and damn they had better have prepared and saved along the way? Why?

So take this socialism and compare it with where it is practiced. Take East Asian growth rates compare them with the US and then compare them with Europe and then compare them with a communist bloc country and what do you see? Interesting. For all the “good” that socialist policies do, overall it is a bit like looting the bank to pay for things that you have not really worked for nor deserved. But then, I am just a greedy Republican who does not give a shit about anyone else. Right? Obviously my thoughts on the matter are all clouded by my intense desire to lower my taxes at the expense of the poor, downtrodden, Black slumster mother with 5 illegitimate children, the White Honky Tonk Trailer Trash mother with her 4 children and 3 divorces and the lazy White mechanic who suffers perennielly from “workplace injuries” and has therefore been on disability since 32. He spends most of his time of course at the local bar to deal with his “pain.” Then, of course, we compare these with the poor Black woman who worked her way through college and is now an executive at an international banking firm, the poor white trash boy who worked his way through college to become a doctor, the poor Black slumster gangsta boy who managed to get through college and is now a public relations executive. Right. I don’t care about the poor. I am a selfish greedy bastard and the government is clearly the answer to all of societies problems. What’s that smell?

[Flipper]

@Vay

To that, let me add this:
What the conservatives really mean by "personal responsibility"is “blame”. If you have nothing, and can accumulate nothing, it’s your own fault. This is how the conservative washes his hands of the poverty and exploitation inevitable in a total unregulated economic environment. It isn’t his fault, it is “impersonal market forces”. It is the “natural order” of things – which government has no business correcting, according to him.

conservatives are more generous in their charity than liberals. conservatives donate more of their own personal time and money to the less fortunate than liberals. the poorest “red states” in the south are more individually generous with private charity than rich “blue states” in the northeast.

so your little theory there is complete and utter shite.

[Flipper]

@Vay

Of course, wealthy elites shower their own with benefits and enjoy a plethora of government benefits and services. They know the value of education; that’s why they keep expensive private schools like Andover in business. In fact, they do everything they can to give their own children every advantage money can buy, because they absolutely understand the value of a head start in the fiercely competitive social jungle they have created. They talk about “free competition”, but they actually fear this very thing, and do what they can to make the playing field as unequal as they can. Then they tell the wage earner that his position is his fault and that he just needs to work harder in their factory. He needs to be more disciplined and thrifty if he wants to get ahead!

the mega wealthy vote disproportionately democratic. bush won the votes of those who made more than $1 mil a year, but kerry won the majority of those who made over $10 mil a year. andover, exeter, and all the ivies are full of liberals(both student body and faculty).

seems you have a beef with liberals…not conservatives. the conservative kids are tailgating at a ut/a&m football game. the ones you have a problem with are the liberal kids partying it up in cambridge, mass. did you not notice that all the rich elitist institutions you’re railing against are all in the heart of blue america???

here’s a fun game: name the most highly rated academic institution located in red america. (hint - it’s most likely confused with another school in blue america)

[Vay]

[quote=“Chewy”]Kerry went to prep school. Joe went to the public high school. Kerry went to Yale ahead of someone with better credentials because he has

[Flipper]

prep schoolers and ivy leaguers are overwelmingly liberal. next time you want to rail against conservatives, don’t hold up urban liberal elites as an example. :raspberry: