What's wrong with the world

[james_davis_nicoll]

Commies. Definitely Commies.

Comments

[onyxlynx]

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

I don't think I've read anything that weird since the late '60s.

[kaffy_r]

Wait, what?

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

Historically challenged her is ignorant of what happened when Thomas Jefferson insisted on Embargo!

Or what happened when Andrew Jackson destroyed the Bank of the United States!

Or what happened after the Civil War when plutocrats and monopolists ran rampant!

IOW, the way of the economic US has been has always been boom and bust. Until --- SHRIEK!!!!! FDR implemented various checks and balances and regulations, which SHRIEK!!!!!!! have been deregulated over and and over since Nixon.

Love, C.

[avram]

Or what happened after the Civil War when plutocrats and monopolists ran rampant!

She thinks that the closest the US ever came to "a collapse of order" was "the race riots", by which I think she means the 1960s. I'm not certain she's heard of the Slavers Rebellion, even by its more common name.

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

Learning American history from Heinlein is like learning Christian theology from Jack Chick comics.

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

Yep, I know that as a southern European when I walk by some Christmas decorations I think STEAL 'EM!

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

Wait, where -- I couldn't read the whole things?

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

I like how Arabs nuking a weaker US leads to Japan and South Korea getting killed off somehow.

[fridgepunk.livejournal.com]

the left was infiltrated by communists in the thirties

wat.

The entire Western World speaks with a unified media voice somewhere to the left of Lenin.

In so far as it's generally anti-union, yes this is clearly true and unarguably true, especially the vanguardist tendencies of the american religious far right wrt meddling in foreign politics. Ever since Theodore Hitlersvelt, the dominant political mode has been leninist in nature *wipes a single tear from the eye of an eagle perched upon the shoulder of the statue of liberty*.

[vschanoes.livejournal.com]

Wait...communists don't "infiltrate" the left! Communists are part of the left! It would be like humanities professors "infiltrating" the academy--we don't have to infiltrate. That's where we are.

[asyouknow-bob.livejournal.com]

No, really: What the hell is wrong with her?

[avram]

She thinks of Heinlein as her daddy.

Whether there is some deeper malady of which that is a symptom is for someone else to determine.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

She saw something nasty in the woodshed. Just like Ayn Rand. Everything bad that ever happened to her was because of commies.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Well, if it's commies, we're safe. That's like worrying about T. Rex in the back yard.

[pickledginger.livejournal.com]

Well ... perhaps not quite so marketable.

[sean o'hara (from livejournal.com)]

On the other hand, we’ve never watched the collapse of a country as large as the US,

Why are the words "Taiping Rebellion" coming to mind?

[nathan helfinstine (from livejournal.com)]

It happened before TV, so we didn't "watch" it.

QED.

[glorin.livejournal.com]

[will not click (er, this time) for the awful]

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

So, I note no one's disagreeing with her in her comments. Same was true for John Wright, last time I peeked in. Is no one bothering to argue with them, or are the comments kept pure?

Oh, I'm wrong. A Valentine in the second link comes in with a leftist manifesto.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

She might be deleting comments that disagree, as might Wright. In any case, I'm both amused and pleased with the tone of apocalyptic denialism from the far right. If they keep this up for 2-4 years (perhaps with some increased tokenism to attempt to ineptly capture the Hispanic vote), they'll lose big enough that the people paying for the GOP might demand some big changes.

I'm actually more worried that the GOP listens to the likes of David Brooks and attempts actual reform w/o entirely dumping the crazies or the libertarianism. However, just like Brooks' call for increased centrism after the '08 election, I suspect he'll be ignored this time too.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

China has a FAR more conformist culture than anywhere in the west, even Portugal.

Wait, what? Since when has Portugal become a byword for Western conformism?

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

Er, since she grew up there? The old universality of one's own experience, don'tcha know.

[agent-mimi.livejournal.com]

those of us who took to the net like a fish to water

Clumsy pun or accidental hilarity?

Tangential: As I mentioned on my own journal, the rightwing Neil Diamond fans have been positively carbonated with weird little anti-Semitic rants about how Jews = Commies + Socialists and that they're being hoodwinked by the scary brown president whose goal is to destroy Israel.

On Twitter, Blake Hounshell gets the strangest anti-Commie anti-Semitic trolls in response to things that have nothing to do with Communism. That's what lead me to "the psychopathy of being Jewish" -- SO MUCH memetic prophylactic recommended on that. And while that blogger doesn't mention Communism in that post, he's frequently mentioning "Jewish Communists."

No idea what's going on lately, but I'm reasonably sure I have a better handle on reality than those guys do.

[elynne.livejournal.com]

Clumsy pun or accidental hilarity?

Yeah, that one threw me. And then I tried to read the rest and realized that was one of the more easily comprehensible bits...

[agent-mimi.livejournal.com]

Also:

"Let’s take the fact that you can now live in Podunk Kansas, or Santa Maria, Brazil and work in New York City."

So apparently when I -- a citizen of Podunk, KS -- was a medical transcriptionist for a VA out of Wilkes-Barre, I was supporting the New World Order of evil Left Of Leninist propaganda. Who knew?

[nathan helfinstine (from livejournal.com)]

They're insidious that way!

[seth ellis (from livejournal.com)]

Yes, I’m fully aware that forces of darkness are closing in on all sides. They’ve been closing in on all sides forever, and the dawn of the industrial age made it worse.

Wow, that's some slow closing in. You'd think it'd be pretty easy to dodge.

Seriously, the more potent and far-reaching people claim these dark conspiracies to be, the more incompetent it makes the conspiracies look, or they would have won by now and forced their dark resource-sharing on us all. Also, is Hoyt claiming that people used to be more free pre-1750 or so? It's a bold claim.

[vschanoes.livejournal.com]

Also, is Hoyt claiming that people used to be more free pre-1750 or so?

Well, you know, that was pre-communism, which is the one true source of all evil, so...

[zxhrue.livejournal.com]

bleah. definitely goes on the dnr list; too much to read, too little time to waste on ignorant spew.

[asyouknow-bob.livejournal.com]

definitely goes on the dnr list; too much to read, too little time to waste on ignorant spew.

I *have* a DNR list (it's populated mostly by OSC and Wright), because there ARE people I won't give money to; but now I'm thinking I might need to go beyond that, to a "Dispose Of Books I've Picked Up Over the Years" list.

[asyouknow-bob.livejournal.com]

"Things ratchet up until normal American families know what hunger is. " [emphasis added.]

Because the fact that "non-normal" American families go hungry TODAY is completely unimportant.

I think I need to start observing James' "MPR" warning.

[asyouknow-bob.livejournal.com]

...and obviously, that made me too angry to close my italics properly....