After spending the last year interacting with many folk in the local liberal community, I have become utterly depressed about the future. In some ways, the liberals of Colorado are just as conservative, if not more, than the conservatives of this state.
In Texas, I didn’t think much about this, simply because there really wasn’t even the smallest pea-sized liberal community in most cities there. Here, it is somewhat different, though not so much better if you really want to see some changes made in America.
It seems that liberals most often have the increased knowledge (in relation to conservatives’ ignorance) to change things, but have little of the attitude necessary to do so. Liberals are much more timid and repressed than even most conservatives. And that is simply not the attitude that gets things done.
I recently saw a major local activist wearing a tee shirt that informed the world, that ‘Ike Was Right’. No he wasn’t, so why in the hell would a liberal say so? A desire to meet conservatives half way with a dialog? This is not how you do it though. This desire to find common ground with pro-militarists and American nationalists is an attitude not of resistance, but of passive surrender.
The attitude is just not here in America that would win at resistance. It is not here in Colorado Springs, as even the supposed leaders supposedly doing something for ‘peace’ exhibit the most submissive and passive attitudes and approaches to political matters. The liberals here want to hold ‘dialogs’ with power, rather than to build resistance to power having impunity. As one Picture of Dorian Gray example of this, the example of Richard Skorman’s political devolution is illustrative…a liberal who turned himself into lobbyist wimp.
The liberal folk here are scared of appearing to be fanatically for anything. Or even more telling, they are scared of appearing fanatically against anything. That is an attitude that builds resistance not at all, and resistance to what America is today is totally necessary for us to be building. Unfortunately, liberals don’t appear capable of taking strong positions on about next to anything.
They lack confidence, which is not something one can lack if one hopes to build resistance. These are people who will be easily appeased by mere appearance of change. The elections will be promising just that, and we can soon expect liberals to be diving into them head first.
Oh how much time I have spent this last year with liberals preoccupied with changing the vote of some local elected cretin or another. A sad attitude and an attitude missing in resistance, or even having a clue to what is going on. Without having more than one or two people in the local community who have some Attitude, just not much will happen. Colorado Springs will continue to tag along Behind, not Ahead, and the main sign of any attitude ready to resist here in the local area, may well stay a dog who says Moo on a sign. There’s not much immediate reason to have hope for what’s ahead.
I would suppose that “Ike was right” referenced his Cross of Iron speech, shortly after his inauguration, which took a full page but basically stated that this is a hungry world, and every time a gun is fired, it gets that much hungrier.
He pointed out that the cost of one bomber was enough to house and feed and clothe and educate all the children in just ONE (the term wasn’t in use yet but…) Third World country… for their entire childhoods. I would have to read it again and it’s just now 4 o’clock in the morning.
The gist of it was, we can either afford war, or we can afford to survive, but not both.
We have the choice put before us now, maybe for the very last time, a genuine effort at world peace, or global suicide.
There’s not much in between, and, to quote Shakespeare from the Funeral of Falstaff, “…this huge hill of flesh, this breaker of horses’ backs…
was yet never a breaker of oaths, he will give the Devil his due”…
That Ike was right once in his career, and then buried it, SHOULD be noted AND, noticed.
There was a three or four page paper on the table at Camp Casey/CS…
Had a whole bunch of quotes that we don’t need to support the war to support the troops, we don’t need to support the President to be patriotic, that we needed an “exit strategy” in the war, that Hussein wasn’t a threat to America, all quoting various chickenhawks from the Bushiite Regime and referencing the Balkans war and the sanctions against the Iraqi people.
I guess when they say something correctly, we really ought to say “Clever lad! Give the lad a biscuit then!” and pat them on the head, kind of as a positive reinforcement of their education…..
And then Hold Them To Those Words when they try to weasel out of them at their later convenience.
‘Ike’ was wrong about the military-industrial complex. We should judge a person more by his actions and not just through the words of one speech, and ‘Ike’ grew the military-industrial complex for 8 long years, as he also grew the McCarthy Era witch-hunts, too.
This effort to find common ground with the Right by actually promoting their historical delusions is very sad and pathetic. Why not just tell the truth instead?
Allow his first statements to tell the truth, then juxtapose them with what he really meant. It’s not hypocrisy on our parts to point out theirs….
It works because when we do, we actually speak their language. If we scream at a German in Danish, a closely related language, he won’t understand no matter how loudly we scream. All we would get from the exercise is a sore throat and a very confused German.
It works the same way when you can quote scripture to people like Dobson or Haggard, and it certainly helps if you can tell the difference between the Bible and Shakespeare, which, by the way, is where I picked up that Falstaff quotation.
Remember too, for somebody to actually REMEMBER Ike’s inauguration he would be at least 60 years old.
The average NeoCon is like late 20s, AVERAGE age, because they recruit some really dumb younguns to their crowd.
I can’t recall any of Kennedy’s speeches from the time he made them, and he was actually in my Lifetime. And that’s ME. I would assume that your average NeoCon gets Kennedy and Ike confuzzled in his pointy little head.
They still promote the idea that Kennedy started America’s involvement in VietNam.
You see the Myth they have made of Reagan’s presidency, and they CAN remember that one.
Maybe it takes a little bit of Shock to get them thinking. It beats smacking them upside the head with a 2×4 or a Louisville Slugger.
Which wouldn’t get their hearts right to begin with, and there’s so many NeoCons and only a limited supply of baseball bats.
But we’ll catch them suckers, yes we will. If we have to use “illegal” scent bait to do it…
Maybe I’m just talking optimistic to try to get myself into a good enough mood to wrestle Social Security and Medicaid later on today.
A little bit of Positive Affirmations to get the day started.