If Mort Divine ruled the world

[Einherjar86]

The fact that Dr Seuss produced pro-WW2 works at a time when American isolationists were being politically persecuted by communists embedded within the government isn't disputed, as far as I'm aware.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Good goy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Dickstein

 

[Einherjar86]

That’s not at all what it sounded like you meant, though. And the House on Un-American activities persecuted communists too. How’s that fit your conspiracy theory?

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Do you dispute the fact that Samuel Dickstein was a paid agent of the NKVD and the co-founder of the persecutory body which specifically targeted the right-wing? It only turned anti-commie after tankie-in-chief FDR died and Dickstein retired months later. The Ware Group, the Perlo Group, and countless others were operating critical portions of the US government under FDR's tenure. After many of the spies mysteriously died of heart attacks and fell out of buildings simultaneously, Harry Truman did the dirty work to ensure that the depth of communist infiltration under FDR was hidden as much as possible, all the while communist spies continued to operate culminating in the loss of nuclear secrets. By contrast, Hugh S Johnson was basically as economically managerial as anyone in FDR's early crowd and led the very influential National Recovery Administration, yet he was ousted by 1934 for merely saying a couple flattering things about Mussolini. I don't see how it gets any more embedded than that.

"Conspiracy theory" is laughable too when it was Dickstein who promoted the completely unfounded and ridiculous Business Plot conspiracy, one which has absolutely zero evidence backing its existence beyond the claim by an decrepit general that a man in sunglasses named Jack approached him one day and said "Hey kid, wanna coup an American president?".

 

[CiG]

Whether it's true or not it clearly didn't amount to much in the long run considering the American right thinks anybody left of Milton Friedman is a communist. Obama spent most of his political capital passing the ACA, socialism let alone communism has no power in the US.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Just learned that the French teacher decapitated by a muzzie over allegedly displaying drawings of Mohammad in fact never displayed any such images, and that a student made the whole thing up as an excuse to explain a suspension for truancy, lmao, the blood libel on the white race marches on.

Whether it's true or not it clearly didn't amount to much in the long run considering the American right thinks anybody left of Milton Friedman is a communist.

FDR's term was the most consequential of any president's in our history, it amounted to a completely new era in American politics. The expansion of government regulation under his communist-friendly term is responsible for everything from the war on drugs to the MIC to the runaway administrative state. His Stalin-friendly foreign policy was instrumental in ensuring that half of the world turned to communism in one form or another. His very last diplomatic act was in petitioning the king of Saudi Arabia to support the creation of Israel, which would of course come into being a few years later under his successor.

'American right' is in and of itself a bit of an oxymoron anyways, split between corporate dupes and defense contractor whores, with only a very tiny handful of contemporary (and largely powerless) exceptions like Rand Paul and Thomas Massie. Trump and his "conservative populism" is only making that more transparent. The last real shot at an American right revival died with Robert Taft. Every attempt since him either imploded or literally died, e.g. Goldwater, Ron Paul, Larry McDonald. Nixon was virtually identical to LBJ on most policy, Reagan sucked up to evangelicals and had a single based moment in firing the air controller union, but otherwise he passed gun restrictions, mandatory emergency room care, massive deficits, the war on drugs, and various other left-wing items. GWB's major legislative accomplishment was medicare part D.

On any realistic timescale by which nations are normally measured, we are in an approximately 100 year long left-wing period following the collapse of American laissez-faire. Post-Mao Communist China is the new right.

Obama spent most of his political capital passing the ACA, socialism let alone communism has no power in the US.

That's because it morphed into corporate left-liberalism, which exists to the left of Marxism.

 

[CiG]

Since you just shat multiple paragraphs of warped reality at me, I'll cherry-pick a bit; how is the 'war on drugs' a left-wing item?

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Since you just shat multiple paragraphs of warped reality at me, I'll cherry-pick a bit; how is the 'war on drugs' a left-wing item?

The nascent of the war on drugs was obviously alcohol prohibition which was a major platform for early progressives and newly emancipated women, though it at least required a constitutional amendment back then. Extra-constitutional measures began under FDR through the quasi-legal Marijuana Stamp Act of 1937, the ostensible motive and justification of banning/restricting drugs being to improve the common health. When it was declared unconstitutional decades later, the strongly Democratic Congress began pushing for more overt disregard of the Commerce Clause (an interpretation vital to declaring private property interests as public interests), with which left-wing LBJ gladly shepherded in the birth of modern drug laws. Nixon coined the term but it took Ronald Reagan, with strong support of left-wing black leaders like Jackson/Sharpton to turn it into all all-out assault on individual liberties in the name of the public's health.

There isn't a single factually incorrect component of my previous post btw.

 

[Einherjar86]

Do you dispute the fact that Samuel Dickstein was a paid agent of the NKVD and the co-founder of the persecutory body which specifically targeted the right-wing? It only turned anti-commie after tankie-in-chief FDR died and Dickstein retired months later. The Ware Group, the Perlo Group, and countless others were operating critical portions of the US government under FDR's tenure. After many of the spies mysteriously died of heart attacks and fell out of buildings simultaneously, Harry Truman did the dirty work to ensure that the depth of communist infiltration under FDR was hidden as much as possible, all the while communist spies continued to operate culminating in the loss of nuclear secrets. By contrast, Hugh S Johnson was basically as economically managerial as anyone in FDR's early crowd and led the very influential National Recovery Administration, yet he was ousted by 1934 for merely saying a couple flattering things about Mussolini. I don't see how it gets any more embedded than that.

Actually, Dickstein worked with Martin Dies to root out communists in the U.S. as early as 1932.

I don't dispute that Dickstein was a Soviet agent--but the U.S. had spies abroad too, "embedded" in the Soviet Union and elsewhere. The presence of Soviet spies in the U.S. was hardly enough to undermine its liberal democratic and predominantly capitalist values system, not to mention the grip of its market ideologues.

You act like the presence of these agents counteracted and rewrote the basis of U.S. politics. That's simply absurd.

FDR's term was the most consequential of any president's in our history, it amounted to a completely new era in American politics. The expansion of government regulation under his communist-friendly term is responsible for everything from the war on drugs to the MIC to the runaway administrative state. His Stalin-friendly foreign policy was instrumental in ensuring that half of the world turned to communism in one form or another. His very last diplomatic act was in petitioning the king of Saudi Arabia to support the creation of Israel, which would of course come into being a few years later under his successor.

The Soviet Union collapsed. 1989 marked the "end of history," according to Francis Fukuyama; Western liberal democracy proved to be the more resilient political form, championing markets over communism. Diplomatic relations between countries does not mean that one country approves of another's economic policy and wants to import it.

'American right' is in and of itself a bit of an oxymoron anyways, split between corporate dupes and defense contractor whores, with only a very tiny handful of contemporary (and largely powerless) exceptions like Rand Paul and Thomas Massie. Trump and his "conservative populism" is only making that more transparent. The last real shot at an American right revival died with Robert Taft. Every attempt since him either imploded or literally died, e.g. Goldwater, Ron Paul, Larry McDonald. Nixon was virtually identical to LBJ on most policy, Reagan sucked up to evangelicals and had a single based moment in firing the air controller union, but otherwise he passed gun restrictions, mandatory emergency room care, massive deficits, the war on drugs, and various other left-wing items. GWB's major legislative accomplishment was medicare part D.

The war on drugs and prohibition were developments of moral progressivism, not political progressivism. You're confusing terms and concepts. It looks to me like you've read that prohibition was supported by progressivists in the early twentieth century and then assumed that early-20thc progressivism = contemporary progressivism; but this is really inaccurate. In fact, progressivism in the early-20thc was almost diametrically opposed to progressivism now; its values have totally shifted. It used to be about purity, temperance, and moral superiority. They saw government intervention as a way to purify the nation on its path to greatness (one element of this was eliminating the black vote). In many ways, progressivism in the early-20thc was a conservative movement.

By all measures, prohibition and the war on drugs were fueled by intensely reactionary conservative values, which we still find among the contemporary Evangelical movement nationwide, generally speaking.

Economically speaking, every president since Reagan has been neoliberal, which hardly translates into leftism or Marxism. You're being way too lenient with your vocabulary. There are protectionist and other forms of federal regulation on businesses, sure; but under the neoliberal order these are often guaranteed to secure business interests, not the interests of consumers or non-business owners.

How do you argue that the American right is the new left when modern economic policy in the U.S. awards private ownership? No one is taking property and distributing it to the masses.

On any realistic timescale by which nations are normally measured, we are in an approximately 100 year long left-wing period following the collapse of American laissez-faire. Post-Mao Communist China is the new right.

That's because it morphed into corporate left-liberalism, which exists to the left of Marxism.

Again, I think you're confusing/conflating concepts--in this case, economic leftism with identity politics, cancel culture, and other current variations of progressive thought. These things do not go hand in hand with Marxism.

There isn't a single factually incorrect component of my previous post btw.

Stringing facts together doesn't amount to an argument. You're picking minutiae and claiming they amount to a new thesis on U.S. history. The objection is that you haven't made a compelling case for anything because you're ignoring 99.99% of the picture.

Where do you get your information on history? I'm asking in all earnestness.

 

[CiG]

The nascent of the war on drugs was obviously alcohol prohibition which was a major platform for early progressives and newly emancipated women, though it at least required a constitutional amendment back then. Extra-constitutional measures began under FDR through the quasi-legal Marijuana Stamp Act of 1937, the ostensible motive and justification of banning/restricting drugs being to improve the common health. When it was declared unconstitutional decades later, the strongly Democratic Congress began pushing for more overt disregard of the Commerce Clause (an interpretation vital to declaring private property interests as public interests), with which left-wing LBJ gladly shepherded in the birth of modern drug laws. Nixon coined the term but it took Ronald Reagan, with strong support of left-wing black leaders like Jackson/Sharpton to turn it into all all-out assault on individual liberties in the name of the public's health.

There isn't a single factually incorrect component of my previous post btw.

Ein more or less said a lot of what I was planning to say; the problem isn't that you have no facts it's that you connect the dots nonsensically.

For example the early prohibitionists were rubbing shoulders with the Anti-Saloon League and the KKK and this is what you're claiming is the catalyst for a so-called "left-wing war on drugs"? These obscurantist narratives make no sense. Referencing "newly emancipated women" as if that means anything they're involved with is left-wing because they're emancipated? If anything women's involvement in prohibition was a huge effort to reinforce patriarchal gender roles and was, as Ein already said about the progressive era, a form of social conservatism.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Actually, Dickstein worked with Martin Dies to root out communists in the U.S. as early as 1932.

Not to any meaningful effect, clearly, but credit for at least reading the Wikipedia page, albeit not honeslty.

I don't dispute that Dickstein was a Soviet agent--but the U.S. had spies abroad too, "embedded" in the Soviet Union and elsewhere. The presence of Soviet spies in the U.S. was hardly enough to undermine its liberal democratic and predominantly capitalist values system, not to mention the grip of its market ideologues.

You act like the presence of these agents counteracted and rewrote the basis of U.S. politics. That's simply absurd.

The difference is that communist spies in America dictated hearings and wrote policy, e.g. Harry Dexter White being assistant to Morgenthau, or the Agriculture Adjustment Act (one of the quintessential New Deal programs) being largely run by the Ware group. Communists were extremely and visibly influential on American policy in the 1930s and 40s.

The Soviet Union collapsed. 1989 marked the "end of history," according to Francis Fukuyama; Western liberal democracy proved to be the more resilient political form, championing markets over communism. Diplomatic relations between countries does not mean that one country approves of another's economic policy and wants to import it.

Who said anything about diplomatic relations? Nothing here responds directly to what I wrote about the impact of FDR's term nor the significance that imported communism had on it. Reads like an AI-generated response tbh.

The war on drugs and prohibition were developments of moral progressivism, not political progressivism. You're confusing terms and concepts. It looks to me like you've read that prohibition was supported by progressivists in the early twentieth century and then assumed that early-20thc progressivism = contemporary progressivism; but this is really inaccurate. In fact, progressivism in the early-20thc was almost diametrically opposed to progressivism now; its values have totally shifted. It used to be about purity, temperance, and moral superiority. They saw government intervention as a way to purify the nation on its path to greatness (one element of this was eliminating the black vote). In many ways, progressivism in the early-20thc was a conservative movement.

By all measures, prohibition and the war on drugs were fueled by intensely reactionary conservative values, which we still find among the contemporary Evangelical movement nationwide, generally speaking.

lmfao, in what world is politically-imposed moral progressivism not political progressivism? One's the body the other's the arm. The rest is pure invention and dishonesty again which you admit by omission in failing to actually quote my post, where I do not mention contemporary progressivism a single time. The point isn't about "progressivism" which is as arbitrary as any political term and a pedantic discussion not worth having. The point I am clearly making is that the early progressive movement has ALWAYS been considered left-wing movement, and that it rests substantially on government/collective intervention in private affairs.

To the extent that eugenics is now a dirty word you are correct, the vocabulary has changed somewhat, otherwise, absolutely wrong. Henry Ford awarding/punishing workers for their private alcohol use is literally no different from today's corporations awarding/punishing workers for their private tobacco use. The Evangelical movement is not intrinsically right-wing either; founding-father of American progressivism William Jennings Bryan was pretty much Evangelical Christianity's political bannerman, which you would know if you knew the slightest bit of what you were talking about. Evangelicals voted Democratic all the way until Ronald Reagan (which I already acknowledged), over reasons of abortion. Globally-speaking, more religious sectors tend to be associated with the economic-left, not the economic-right.

Economically speaking, every president since Reagan has been neoliberal, which hardly translates into leftism or Marxism. You're being way too lenient with your vocabulary. There are protectionist and other forms of federal regulation on businesses, sure; but under the neoliberal order these are often guaranteed to secure business interests, not the interests of consumers or non-business owners.

Where did I mention protectionism? You ignore the several well-established examples I gave, including public healthcare and anti-gun legislation, and then throw out protectionism as if I've ever denied the reliance of left-liberalism on neoliberal economic policies.

How do you argue that the American right is the new left when modern economic policy in the U.S. awards private ownership? No one is taking property and distributing it to the masses.

Small business ownership has been in constant decline since FDR, and civil liability has never been higher. The civil rights act of 1964 and subsequent EEOC basically criminalizes business ownership for those with the wrong opinions. Government bailouts overwhelmingly go to banks and "too big to fail" corporations (another Reagan-era accomplishment) while small debtors are told to pound sand. American households are renting more and owning less, particularly among younger generations. The tax burden of the middle class reached a plateau under the left-wing Reagan era. Private ownership has hardly ever been less-rewarded, unless you think Putin-style oligarchy is economic liberalism.

Again, I think you're confusing/conflating concepts--in this case, economic leftism with identity politics, cancel culture, and other current variations of progressive thought. These things do not go hand in hand with Marxism.

As I said, Marxism is to the right of left-liberalism.

Stringing facts together doesn't amount to an argument. You're picking minutiae and claiming they amount to a new thesis on U.S. history. The objection is that you haven't made a compelling case for anything because you're ignoring 99.99% of the picture.

Where do you get your information on history? I'm asking in all earnestness.

Weird because you have hardly cited anything beyond the meme end of history guy.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Ein more or less said a lot of what I was planning to say; the problem isn't that you have no facts it's that you connect the dots nonsensically.

For example the early prohibitionists were rubbing shoulders with the Anti-Saloon League and the KKK and this is what you're claiming is the catalyst for a so-called "left-wing war on drugs"? These obscurantist narratives make no sense. Referencing "newly emancipated women" as if that means anything they're involved with is left-wing because they're emancipated? If anything women's involvement in prohibition was a huge effort to reinforce patriarchal gender roles and was, as Ein already said about the progressive era, a form of social conservatism.

I define leftism as collectivism and rightism as anti-collectivism. If you have a cleaner definition, let me know. To that end, asking the government to ban an entire private industry, one which spans back to the earliest recorded history, just because your drunk husband beats you, is clearly left-wing. I'm unaware of many in the West (self-proclaimed feminists included) willing to eliminate patriarchal gender roles, which are pretty foundational to traditional Western values. By contrast, Marx did oppose feminist politics to the extent that they interfered with his class goals, and Mao saw that through the Cultural Revolution which was the most successful application of gender equality in world history that I'm aware of, to the extent that 50 years of post-Maoist Western capitalism have failed to widen the very-narrow gender gaps seen in modern day state-capitalist Communist China.

Do you think even modern leftism is somehow not socially conservative, e.g. wokeism? Conservatism is hardly right-wing anyways. With the sole exception of gun legislation (thanks as much to private support of organizations like the NRA as actual elected officials), conservatism has consistently failed to enact meaningful right-ward shifts in policy. There is hardly a "socially conservative" position of a given year that has not been forced out of the Overton window one generation later.

I disagree with your implication that the KKK was an inherently right-wing organization anyways. The KKK came about after the failed left-wing Confederate insurrection required resorting to pettier anarcho-tyrannical measures. It was the South that popularized sociology and class-determinism, that produced noted pantocrats, that opposed self-sufficient small-businesses in the name of global trade and economic maximalism, that produced two of the most left-wing presidents in our history, etc. By contrast, it was Lincoln's right-libertarian third-position that made the Gilded Age possible.

 

[CiG]

My heart just isn't in debating anymore.

I define leftism as collectivism and rightism as anti-collectivism. If you have a cleaner definition, let me know. To that end, asking the government to ban an entire private industry, one which spans back to the earliest recorded history, just because your drunk husband beats you, is clearly left-wing.

It isn't "clearly left-wing" at all, especially when you consider that the prime articulation of the wives' grievances was something to the approximation of "alcohol is causing men to fall short of their husbandly duties" which is, by definition, a complaint steeped in social conservatism.

Also by your definition of right-wing and left-wing, every single government in recorded history is left-wing except I suppose the US with its individualist constitution?

Do you think even modern leftism is somehow not socially conservative, e.g. wokeism? Conservatism is hardly right-wing anyways. With the sole exception of gun legislation (thanks as much to private support of organizations like the NRA as actual elected officials), conservatism has consistently failed to enact meaningful right-ward shifts in policy. There is hardly a "socially conservative" position of a given year that has not been forced out of the Overton window one generation later.

The fact you think "wokeism" is socially conservative when it actively seeks to dismantle (albeit clumsily) socially conservative concepts like gender roles, pronouns, the gender binary, monogamy etc is just retarded to me.

The fact that the right consistently fails at upholding social conservatism in policy isn't evidence that conservatism isn't right-wing but rather evidence that even on the right they understand that it's a dead end and a waste of political capital and energy. All the right can really suggest regarding social conservatism is a desire that private citizens live their values, because passing socially conservative policy necessarily restricts the freedoms of people who fall outside of that policy but socially progressive policy doesn't restrict social conservatives by contrast. Society is leaving these things behind and trying to keep them alive is politically dead.

That doesn't mean it isn't right-wing.

I disagree with your implication that the KKK was an inherently right-wing organization anyways. The KKK came about after the failed left-wing Confederate insurrection required resorting to pettier anarcho-tyrannical measures. It was the South that popularized sociology and class-determinism, that produced noted pantocrats, that opposed self-sufficient small-businesses in the name of global trade and economic maximalism, that produced two of the most left-wing presidents in our history, etc. By contrast, it was Lincoln's right-libertarian third-position that made the Gilded Age possible.

The Confederacy was left-wing now? So the slave-owning Confederates and the KKK were left-wing... care to eplain?

I regret commenting.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

It isn't "clearly left-wing" at all, especially when you consider that the prime articulation of the wives' grievances was something to the approximation of "alcohol is causing men to fall short of their husbandly duties" which is, by definition, a complaint steeped in social conservatism.

"Duties" are left-wing.

Also by your definition of right-wing and left-wing, every single government in recorded history is left-wing except I suppose the US with its individualist constitution?

In practice government-less societies always fail due to foreign invasion, tragedies of the commons, or majoritarian support for a state. That doesn't mean governments cannot still be judged on a relative left-right axis (which is all the left-right dichotomy is good for, relative comparison). For example, I believe the existence of the state is necessary to solve problems of externalities like pollution, as well as preventing monopolies over strictly-finite items like rivers, coastlines, oil fields, etc. I'm pretty much a center-right moderate with perfectly ordinary and mundane worldviews.

The fact you think "wokeism" is socially conservative when it actively seeks to dismantle (albeit clumsily) socially conservative concepts like gender roles, pronouns, the gender binary, monogamy etc is just retarded to me.

Cultural and moral norms change but wokeism is a reaction to the rejection of norms. People are punished for rejecting wokeism, not accepting it.

The fact that the right consistently fails at upholding social conservatism in policy isn't evidence that conservatism isn't right-wing but rather evidence that even on the right they understand that it's a dead end and a waste of political capital and energy. All the right can really suggest regarding social conservatism is a desire that private citizens live their values, because passing socially conservative policy necessarily restricts the freedoms of people who fall outside of that policy but socially progressive policy doesn't restrict social conservatives by contrast. Society is leaving these things behind and trying to keep them alive is politically dead.

That doesn't mean it isn't right-wing.

Policy without practice is meaningless. I agree that conservatism is a dead end, the problem is that it always has been, and self-identified conservatives never realize it. Though I disagree that it is only "society" changing things as a kind of abstract matrix of individual decisions. For example, Californians passed propositions to ban gay marriage and ban immigrants from using social services, and in both cases the left-wing Supreme Court reversed the democratic will of the majority. After enough time, indoctrination, and emigration, however, California would of course become the stalwart champions of both homosexuality and illegal immigration. Conservatives fail to exercise power even when it would be popular, likely because of social strata lag; the elites are almost always at the forefront of liberal society, and they will never take actions that make their own children pariahs even if it means completing the will of their constituency. This is why the Eisenhower, Goldwater, Nixon, Reagan, etc families have produced children and grandchildren that defy their party heritage. "Politics is downstream from culture", as Breitbart put it, and the culture wars fought using liberal means are every bit as invasive and inescapable as Hoxkaist mandate.

The Confederacy was left-wing now? So the slave-owning Confederates and the KKK were left-wing... care to eplain?

I regret commenting.

George Fitzhugh was generally considered to be the CSA's greatest intellectual, and was the man who brought 'sociology' to American audiences, advocating for slavery as the natural form of any government, caretakers providing work, food, and shelter for those on the bottom. John Tyler, the 10th American president and the only ex-president to side with the confederacy, explicitly reached out to immigrant Northerners and used early racialized class warfare to appeal to foundational American leftists like Michael Walsh (king of the Bowery Boys who was using Marxist rhetoric like 'wage slavery' before Marx had even been translated to English), which culminated in the Draft riots, killing more free blacks than any Southern massacre ever did. Lincoln explicitly oriented his first inaugural address to refute the necessity of both slavery and wage slavery simultaneously by daring state that men could not only own the fruit of their labor but also the means of their labor. Virtually all contemporary politicians ignore Lincoln's radically right-wing first address in favor of his second (the latter still being great but not nearly as dissonant on a backdrop of post-Depression corporate leftism).

The entire precedent for gun restrictions stems back to the Cruikshank Supreme Court case over free blacks who attempted to defend themselves, the Court deciding in a 5-4 decision that the Bill of Rights does not apply to individuals and that there is no individual right to bare arms (reversal of that decision has come from a mix of old civil libertarians and newer conservatives). By FDR's time, his greatest political threat came from the South in Huey Long's own populist brand of leftism. The first four post-FDR Democrats were all Southerners, two of them very explicitly left-wing, one admittedly the least left-wing president since Taft (Jimmy Carter), and the last an attempted-lefty who only capitulated and gave up because it got in the way of getting his dick wet.

The entire concept of the conservative South is rooted in a handful of relatively newish revisionist history, like the "Southern strategy" or the idea that Evangelicals have always been a bedrock of the right.

 

[CiG]

I'm pretty much a center-right moderate with perfectly ordinary and mundane worldviews.

Maybe the most delusional thing you've ever said.

"Duties" are left-wing.

What? Alcohol was threatening the tradition of the male gender role in the US, wives got involved with prohibition in order to conserve said tradition. How is any of that left-wing?

Cultural and moral norms change but wokeism is a reaction to the rejection of norms. People are punished for rejecting wokeism, not accepting it.

No it's a rejection of norms, not a reaction to a rejection of norms. The gender binary is a norm, the dominance of white/male voices is a norm, "wokeism" is a rejection of them. I don't know what the hell you're on about here. "Wokeism" cannot be social conservatism if it's not trying to conserve anything.

There is so much Gish galloping going on here. For example I randomly chose something to look up from your comment; I chose your claim that the NYC draft riots "killed more free blacks than any Southern massacre ever did" but according to Wiki the highest recorded amount of fatalities is 120 and I don't see anywhere a racial breakdown of those fatalities, but let's say they were all black people who were killed during those race riots, that's definitely not larger than massacres of black people that have happened in the south. 'Black Wall Street' in Oklahoma was burned to the ground in 1921, 100 businesses destroyed, 300 approx. black people killed. That's just from a very cursory search on my behalf.

Does that reflect the laziness of your post or an anomaly? How the fuck am I supposed to know the veracity of the billion references you make with each paragraph?

 

[HamburgerBoy]

What? Alcohol was threatening the tradition of the male gender role in the US, wives got involved with prohibition in order to conserve said tradition. How is any of that left-wing?

Yeah that newfangled alcohol, prohibition was all about returning to monke

No it's a rejection of norms, not a reaction to a rejection of norms. The gender binary is a norm, the dominance of white/male voices is a norm, "wokeism" is a rejection of them. I don't know what the hell you're on about here. "Wokeism" cannot be social conservatism if it's not trying to conserve anything.

Wokeism is conserving the status quo of the last few decades. Questioning wokeism gets you disinvited from talks, shut down by the mob, etc.

There is so much Gish galloping going on here. For example I randomly chose something to look up from your comment; I chose your claim that the NYC draft riots "killed more free blacks than any Southern massacre ever did" but according to Wiki the highest recorded amount of fatalities is 120 and I don't see anywhere a racial breakdown of those fatalities, but let's say they were all black people who were killed during those race riots, that's definitely not larger than massacres of black people that have happened in the south. 'Black Wall Street' in Oklahoma was burned to the ground in 1921, 100 businesses destroyed, 300 approx. black people killed. That's just from a very cursory search on my behalf.

Does that reflect the laziness of your post or an anomaly? How the fuck am I supposed to know the veracity of the billion references you make with each paragraph?

If you were familiar with the Tulsa race riot longer than one hour ago you would know that it has become highly overblown in recent years. Just use the Wikipedia history function, go back several years, and you'll see that that no one even called it a 'race massacre' until fairly recently. There was also a laughable failed attempt at finding mass graves just last year in order to fuel the George Floyd frenzy. The Tulsa race riot was on a somewhat larger scale than other contemporary riots and it was certainly bad, but it was resolved within less than two days, and the original estimates (not the bullshit revisionist ones) put the death toll in the dozens. By contrast, the draft riots required several regiments including federal troops to be contained, which took twice as long.

Also, I never said that the single draft riot in New York was larger than the cumulative sum of every single Southern race riot or lynching in history, obviously. I gave an example of a riot that was explicitly grounded in the intersection between 1) left-wing class motives, and 2) Southern slavery motives.

If you really had a disagreement with my assertion on the left vs right wing nature of the various things I said, you wouldn't be arguing piddling over nearly impossible to verify death counts.

 

[Einherjar86]

Not to any meaningful effect, clearly, but credit for at least reading the Wikipedia page, albeit not honeslty.

Thought I'd try using what appears to be your main source of info. Turns out it has a lot of stuff that contradicts your weird sense of history.

The difference is that communist spies in America dictated hearings and wrote policy, e.g. Harry Dexter White being assistant to Morgenthau, or the Agriculture Adjustment Act (one of the quintessential New Deal programs) being largely run by the Ware group. Communists were extremely and visibly influential on American policy in the 1930s and 40s.

Which made them easier to weed out, ironically.

Twentieth-century U.S. policy wasn't drastically impacted by the presence of Soviet spies. It was influenced in large part by a conservative "moral majority" (anachronistic use of the term, but still fits) that wanted to resist what it saw as the contaminating force of modern industry, urbanization, and politics.

This isn't something you're going to disprove by collecting random factoids on the internet and drawing constellations between them like stars, all the while ignoring the rest of the sky. Yes, it's true that communism was a political force in early-20thc U.S. politics; and yes, it's true that Soviet spies infiltrated at various levels; and yes, it's true that the New Deal was an unprecedented reach of government intervention in a time of equally unprecedented economic crisis.

None of this qualifies or justifies your absurd characterization of U.S. left-liberalism as "further left than Marxism." This would be satire if its author didn't actually believe it.

Who said anything about diplomatic relations? Nothing here responds directly to what I wrote about the impact of FDR's term nor the significance that imported communism had on it. Reads like an AI-generated response tbh.

I'm responding to your suggestion that FDR seemed to want to import communism to the U.S.--which I took to be your meaning regarding his sympathies to Stalin.

I think you're making very big assumptions in everything you say, and I'm objecting to them. Simple as that.

lmfao, in what world is politically-imposed moral progressivism not political progressivism? One's the body the other's the arm. The rest is pure invention and dishonesty again which you admit by omission in failing to actually quote my post, where I do not mention contemporary progressivism a single time. The point isn't about "progressivism" which is as arbitrary as any political term and a pedantic discussion not worth having. The point I am clearly making is that the early progressive movement has ALWAYS been considered left-wing movement, and that it rests substantially on government/collective intervention in private affairs.

To the extent that eugenics is now a dirty word you are correct, the vocabulary has changed somewhat, otherwise, absolutely wrong. Henry Ford awarding/punishing workers for their private alcohol use is literally no different from today's corporations awarding/punishing workers for their private tobacco use. The Evangelical movement is not intrinsically right-wing either; founding-father of American progressivism William Jennings Bryan was pretty much Evangelical Christianity's political bannerman, which you would know if you knew the slightest bit of what you were talking about. Evangelicals voted Democratic all the way until Ronald Reagan (which I already acknowledged), over reasons of abortion. Globally-speaking, more religious sectors tend to be associated with the economic-left, not the economic-right.

This is such horseshit.

How is the owner of a private company telling his employees what they can or can't do "leftist"? Furthermore, how is that in any way "collectivist"? Your application of leftism is sheer fantasy.

Where did I mention protectionism? You ignore the several well-established examples I gave, including public healthcare and anti-gun legislation, and then throw out protectionism as if I've ever denied the reliance of left-liberalism on neoliberal economic policies.

I'm saying your examples don't amount to what you think they do. You have a misguided idea of what constitutes an argument.

Small business ownership has been in constant decline since FDR, and civil liability has never been higher. The civil rights act of 1964 and subsequent EEOC basically criminalizes business ownership for those with the wrong opinions. Government bailouts overwhelmingly go to banks and "too big to fail" corporations (another Reagan-era accomplishment) while small debtors are told to pound sand. American households are renting more and owning less, particularly among younger generations. The tax burden of the middle class reached a plateau under the left-wing Reagan era. Private ownership has hardly ever been less-rewarded, unless you think Putin-style oligarchy is economic liberalism.

It seems to be that you're associating the decline in American entrepreneurship with a hostile left-wing politics, which I still say is largely unfounded. This article from the Atlantic gets at the point. The decline in small business start-ups/ownership has less to do with economically hostile policies than it does with the general trajectory of U.S. economy toward large-scale establishments (e.g. chains). These tend to out-perform smaller businesses, but not because of politics; in fact, it has to do with that most lauded of capitalist tenets, competition.

As job growth tends toward larger businesses with more staying power, the economy calms down; and this means less room for new businesses to grow, because they have to compete with more situated and familiar entities.

You seem to have some outsized dystopian vision of U.S. politics working against small business. This is very much not the case in a widespread, general sense.

As I said, Marxism is to the right of left-liberalism.

As I said, horseshit.

Weird because you have hardly cited anything beyond the meme end of history guy.

Dude, you're leaving it to me to fact-check you. Look up stuff I mention if you care to.

If you were familiar with the Tulsa race riot longer than one hour ago you would know that it has become highly overblown in recent years. Just use the Wikipedia history function, go back several years, and you'll see that that no one even called it a 'race massacre' until fairly recently.

Why do you think that is? You act like this is evidence that it's been "highly overblown." Why isn't it the case that, when it occurred, it was significantly ignored, dismissed, and erased from history? Do you remember learning about it in secondary school? I sure don't.

The Tulsa massacre was under-reported and dismissed after it happened. The increasing attention over the past decade isn't the result of it being overblown, but of historians' work on the subject finally being given the time of day. Academics have studied the history surrounding the event for a while now; the U.S. just didn't care or want to hear about it.

 

[CiG]

Yeah that newfangled alcohol, prohibition was all about returning to monke

The implication being that social conservatives promote anything as long as it's old? Also suggesting alcohol and leftism are incompatible? You've not really addressed my point here; wives were complaining that men were faltering in their husbandly duties, it wasn't about healing society for them, it was about preserving their family and household by any means necessary. It was conservative activism.

Wokeism is conserving the status quo of the last few decades. Questioning wokeism gets you disinvited from talks, shut down by the mob, etc.

This is some slimy af reframing of the subject. "Wokeism" is "conserving" LGBTQ+ culture therefor it's socially conservative? lmfao what the fuck are you on about?

And what does getting "disinvited from talks, shut down by the mob, etc" have to do with social conservativeness? Bigotry (whether perceived or real) has slowly become untenable for many corporations and organizations and to the credit of activists and loud voices willing to boycott and engage in pressure campaigns; when you fuck around you find out. Something the right used to be good at when it had much more social credibility to wield pre-1990's.

If you were familiar with the Tulsa race riot longer than one hour ago you would know that it has become highly overblown in recent years. Just use the Wikipedia history function, go back several years, and you'll see that that no one even called it a 'race massacre' until fairly recently. There was also a laughable failed attempt at finding mass graves just last year in order to fuel the George Floyd frenzy. The Tulsa race riot was on a somewhat larger scale than other contemporary riots and it was certainly bad, but it was resolved within less than two days, and the original estimates (not the bullshit revisionist ones) put the death toll in the dozens. By contrast, the draft riots required several regiments including federal troops to be contained, which took twice as long.

Don't know why you're taking a shot at me for only just reading up on the Black Wall Street massacre when I admitted as much in the same comment. The point was that a few minutes in Google and I've already found holes in what you're saying but I assume your tactic is to just reference as much obscure shit from US history as possible knowing nobody save the most autistic fuck online will fact-check every single one of them.

I'll leave the decision as to whether the massacre was overblown up to the experts. There's actually a documentary on the subject coming out very soon (exec-produced and financially backed by Russell Westbrook).

Also, I never said that the single draft riot in New York was larger than the cumulative sum of every single Southern race riot or lynching in history, obviously. I gave an example of a riot that was explicitly grounded in the intersection between 1) left-wing class motives, and 2) Southern slavery motives.

I didn't say shit about cumulative massacres in the south, I cited 1 example to counter your 1 example. It was a 1:1 comparison. If my example chafes your tits so badly I'm sure I could easily find other massacres of free blacks in the south that number more than 120 fatalities.

If you really had a disagreement with my assertion on the left vs right wing nature of the various things I said, you wouldn't be arguing piddling over nearly impossible to verify death counts.

The point is that if even the more mundane elements of your comments are this badly framed what the fuck else will I find?

FYI it's dishonest to refer to something as having "left-wing class motives" when the nature of the event was poor whites murdering poor blacks. That's just right-wing populism, not left-wing class politics you retard.

 

[rms]

https://twitter.com/xlucymoorex/status/1369760178493620236?s=19

 

[Blurry_Dreams]

To be brief, I would say that aesthetic efforts absent any political or social considerations whatsoever don't qualify as art. Art connotes something more than mastery of craft/technique. Someone can paint an immaculate landscape piece that looks like a photograph, but that technical proficiency alone doesn't make it art.

I disagree

Art can be art with out the piece being social commentary

I then have to follow this thought by saying that social commentary doesn't need to be art

The two are separate ideas
One doesn't need to be the other

But in addition to being separated ideas
There can easily be things that are both art and social commentary simultaneously

Such as The Watchmen comic