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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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| Nick - Pie Man wrote: |
Totally agree. It's sad to see anti NK American propaganda is still being repeated by otherwise rational people ..
you can cut it out now, north Korea isn't the devil any more |
Nothing to do with American propaganda. Read Justice Michael Kirby’s report. You’ll find facts there, not propaganda, which amply justify my statement. It is possible that Kim is looking for a way out. What we know is that he leads one of the vilest dictatorships in the world, seeks nuclear arms, and has a Caligula-like taste for unusual executions of family members and others. It’s worth meeting him, for several reasons, but it’s best to know what he is when you do.
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Two more flags before I die! |
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Wokko 
Come and take it.
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
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Pies4shaw 
pies4shaw
Joined: 08 Oct 2007
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Wokko
Come and take it.
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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^ firstly, credit to PBS for genuinely representing a point of view not often found in public broadcasting. The BBC and (particularly) the embarrassingly partisan ABC could learn much from it.
Secondly, the quote below describes what has been lost from mainstream American thought as the political poles have fled away from one another :
“We live in a cisgender, patriarchal, heteronormative, white patriarchy,” she remembered her LGBTQ peers saying. No, thought Brown, we live in a constitutional republic.”
The rabid Right has its own version of this babble. Let’s hope there are enough Ms Browns to keep the light of reason alive in America. A political culture which no longer has any adult moorings of the kind articulated in that quote is ripe for extremism and subversion.
The pity is that the people whose voices are heard in this article should have to turn to Trump, of all people, to express their refusal to be intimidated. For all Trump’s unworthiness, he has been a living expression of that treasured American value, the freedom to speak. Perhaps that is the thickest of the many-layered reasons for his mystifying election.
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Two more flags before I die! |
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Pies4shaw
pies4shaw
Joined: 08 Oct 2007
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| I didn’t say she was a Trump supporter. No doubt the world is full of racists who are not Trump supporters. However, when the clown in office refers to an entire race of people as rapists, drug dealers and animals, it is what - just a coincidence that she chose that precise language? His obvious role in enabling this sort of routine public racism is not so easily dismissed as you would like to pretend. |
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Pies4shaw
pies4shaw
Joined: 08 Oct 2007
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| As to your link, if people want to go out and rally publicly in political support of a man who is a racist bigot, there is more than a passing likelihood that they may be similarly labelled. If you want to wear that as a badge of courage, you obviously don’t understand that actions have consequences. |
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Pi 
Joined: 13 Feb 2006
Location: SA
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David 
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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Good article. I really can’t stand these macho, balaclava-clad, Che Guevara-wannabe vigilantes – if they’re able to alienate people like me (and I’ve found every online discussion with them profoundly unpleasant and unedifying), what chance do they have of winning the hearts and minds of society as a whole? And the irony is that their tactics only make the right stronger.
You might be able to scare someone and silence them into submission, but you’re never going to be able to convince them of your views that way.
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All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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^ the problem is that the balaclava wearers are in thrall to an absolute morality, where they are judge and jury of people’s actions and motives. There is a lot of symmetry at the crazier edges of politics, and what they share is the absolute conviction that the other party is not just wrong, but that he or she has no real right to believe as they do.
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Two more flags before I die! |
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Pies4shaw
pies4shaw
Joined: 08 Oct 2007
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| David wrote: |
Good article. I really can’t stand these macho, balaclava-clad, Che Guevara-wannabe vigilantes – if they’re able to alienate people like me (and I’ve found every online discussion with them profoundly unpleasant and unedifying), what chance do they have of winning the hearts and minds of society as a whole? And the irony is that their tactics only make the right stronger.
You might be able to scare someone and silence them into submission, but you’re never going to be able to convince them of your views that way. |
The problem with that, of course, is that we all understand that the ratbag element on the left is entirely irrelevant, politically. The behaviour of both members of the “radical left” is abominable but they affect nothing. On the other hand, the clowns who go onto the streets to demonstrate support for their leader are in the ascendancy. Both elements are equally undemocratic but only one of them is - by virtue of the apparently broad appeal of their leader’s unashamedly dishonest, racist and xenophobic frothing - an actual threat to democracy.
One also has to wonder what the dumbo right thinks it is “demonstrating” about. The President is the President and his party has control of the House. Perhaps they are demonstrating in favour of vengeance and crushing their opposition, or perhaps the abolition of the third element of their government (which occasionally calls their leader to account by requiring him to act lawfully). Otherwise, it’s hard to see that they have any genuine point to make. |
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thesoretoothsayer
Joined: 26 Apr 2017
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MJ23
Joined: 28 Feb 2011
Location: Sydney
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| Pies4shaw wrote: | | I didn’t say she was a Trump supporter. No doubt the world is full of racists who are not Trump supporters. However, when the clown in office refers to an entire race of people as rapists, drug dealers and animals, it is what - just a coincidence that she chose that precise language? His obvious role in enabling this sort of routine public racism is not so easily dismissed as you would like to pretend. |
Trump said that......about and entire race ?
Wow
_________________
"Even when Im old and gray, I wont be able to play but Ill still love the game"
Michael Jordan |
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Pies4shaw
pies4shaw
Joined: 08 Oct 2007
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Perhaps it is. Then, the US could become a series of nations of gun-toting, white-supremacist hobos, with a couple of successful countries amongst them, built on the back of people who can read and write and count and do a decent day's work.
One of the many funny things about American conservative paranoia is that it disregards the reality that the "disenfranchised, disaffected white poor" depend upon handouts from the people in the country who have jobs and make money, quite a number of whom are not genuine white-people. That is, after all, how they became disenfranchised, white poor people - they couldn't get by without living off the labour of others. In fact, if you think about it, that underpinned the divide in the Civil War - the South's prosperity depended upon the enslavement of the core of its labour market.
Of course, when people in the US can seriously contemplate writing a sentence that implies that a former member of the US Supreme Court is a member of something called "the Left", you know that they've actually lost any meaningful point of political reference from their compass. But I don't propose to pursue that line, since VPT seems to be full of posters who think that people can be multi-millionaires, members of all the "right" clubs and fomenters of left-wing dissent, as well. |
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MJ23
Joined: 28 Feb 2011
Location: Sydney
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| Pies4shaw wrote: | | David wrote: |
Good article. I really can’t stand these macho, balaclava-clad, Che Guevara-wannabe vigilantes – if they’re able to alienate people like me (and I’ve found every online discussion with them profoundly unpleasant and unedifying), what chance do they have of winning the hearts and minds of society as a whole? And the irony is that their tactics only make the right stronger.
You might be able to scare someone and silence them into submission, but you’re never going to be able to convince them of your views that way. |
The problem with that, of course, is that we all understand that the ratbag element on the left is entirely irrelevant, politically. The behaviour of both members of the “radical left” is abominable but they affect nothing. On the other hand, the clowns who go onto the streets to demonstrate support for their leader are in the ascendancy. Both elements are equally undemocratic but only one of them is - by virtue of the apparently broad appeal of their leader’s unashamedly dishonest, racist and xenophobic frothing - an actual threat to democracy.
One also has to wonder what the dumbo right thinks it is “demonstrating” about. The President is the President and his party has control of the House. Perhaps they are demonstrating in favour of vengeance and crushing their opposition, or perhaps the abolition of the third element of their government (which occasionally calls their leader to account by requiring him to act lawfully). Otherwise, it’s hard to see that they have any genuine point to make. |
Does the ratbag element of the left include Fallon, Kimmel, Colbert, Fonda, Handler, Griffin, C Nixon, M watters, Odonnell, Madona, Behar, Goldberg, Maddow, Brzezinski, Reid, Baldwin...............and on and on.
Its these and many more that are calling out Nazi and hate at every opportunity as if any opposition or argument against them must be evil to the point that it should not allowed be heard at all. This is not working and only fuelling Trumps base and now even more the swing voters. Look at the Polls.
Its not hard for any person to do a little online research and see that the democrats - and key players including Clinton's x2, Obama, Pelosi and Schummer are just as complicit and advocated the same opinions as Trump on issues that Trump is attacked for today.
I mean the guy is so transparent on policy and provides plenty of opportunity to attack him on specific issues, missing detail on Bills / plans as well as the republican party's genuine divide. Id love to see him challenged this way.
This is some of what the so called "right" demonstrate against and have every right to do so. Understanding how the American system works is a start because Trump does not have the control and support of congress he needs to pass permanent law's . Obama did at one stage.
Vitriol, rhetoric and plain false reporting is just fuel to the fire and so...................tiresome. The voting public do not have to take for granted what celebrities and journalists, purported to be neutral, have to say from both sides anymore because the information is too easy to fact check.
Attacking anyone in public is wrong. Left and right.
_________________
"Even when Im old and gray, I wont be able to play but Ill still love the game"
Michael Jordan |
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