http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/06/20/repressive-democracy/
comes an angry honest straight shootin guy .....
"the best, perhaps the only, way to waste a vote is to cast it for the purported lesser evil,
the drone-besotted corporate flunky who has made it all but impossible even to speak without derision of “hope” or “change.”
my my let us delve :
" . cheerleaders for Obama. ... have so little to cheer, they fear monger shamelessly — making much, perhaps too much, of Republican idiocy....it is also diversionary..... it frees (Dembocrats) up to toady to the capitalists whose hearts and minds they yearn, in vain, to win over."
whoops .....toady in vain ??
now that is categorically misleading eh ?
the ohbummer wing of the party was fucking BUILT by corporate sponsors
ahh but in the spirit of gracious open mindedness and a dull 100 degree noon time out there
let us pass on jet thru this tinsel talk and ....unleash ... Herr Marcuse !
errr in paraphrase
"despite a comparative absence of overt repression, “critical” thinking, counter-systemic thinking opposed to the established order is if anything, even less evident in liberal democracies than in societies where speech and other forms of expression are
subject to government suppression and control."
i'm nodding off then it hits me paine try for once to enter into the magic
of these cheap hegelian card tricks:
feature this :
suppression and tolerence are interpenetrating
and in the limitless dynamic of history
comes a conjuncture where opposites join forces
"where repressive tolerance reigns"
now call it..... AMERIKA
where "... anybody can say anything, but it doesn’t matter; critical thought is effectively neutered....Tolerance... renders criticism impotent."
but that's not the topic so here now we experience a shrewdly conceived parallel:
" it bears reflection whether, in our circumstances, democracy,
or at least the electoral system that captures
a large part of what we nowadays mean by that word,
can work to the detriment of democratic ideals,
whether like tolerence democracy too
can function repressively (or, more precisely anti-democratically)."
democracy becomes antidemocracy
"......our's is indeed a repressive democracy, and our electoral system
...... has become a means for keeping an oppressive status quo in place."
okay so where to next big fella ?oh God ..here it drops
the final bird turd
..go read it yourself
yup he said it
instead of applying lesser evilism to the gaping sore in washington ....
our hero recommends
we all vote our conscience
or nearly so
"vote third party"
vote...... jill st john !!!
i stagger grow foggy ......
-----------------------------------------------------------
now five minutes and a bud lite later
comes over me
some peace of mind
on further consideration perhaps
instead of fulminating like the great glenn beck
i think i'll simply rework his column
here big pink footed teutonic meme cracker
oughta be yer zinger end line
not as is not as i led off with ....
change it to this :
"the best, perhaps the only, way to waste a vote is to cast it. "
period
full stop
end of contextualized wisdom
brothers and sisters
speak no more of this
oh ya and tell jill st john to stick her sanctimonious gren thumb up her ...
SMBIVA !!!!
Comments (6)
great post!
bird turd indeed!
as for amerikan demokracy, the good folks at crimethinc.com have some shrewd observations on the subject.
among them is this hidden in plain sight truth:
"Think about what goes on in the Pentagon and the Kremlin and the offices of every town hall. Those day-to-day activities are the same under Democrats as under Republicans; they’re not much different today than they were a hundred years ago. Whoever happens to be operating it, the machinery of the state imposes its own logic: administration, coercion, control. Politicians promise us the world, but their job is to keep it out of our hands—to govern it.
"Our ancestors fought hard to overthrow the kings who ruled them. When they finally succeeded, they kept the structures the kings had established—the same ministries and courts and armies..."
which is to say, to borrow from Gandhi, amerikan Revolution would be a good idea.
speaking of CounterPunch, i was more darkly amused by Why Obama Must be Defeated:
"Not Ralph Nader. Not Amy Goodman. Not Noam Chomsky. Not Chris Hedges. Not Cornel West. Not Alexander Cockburn. Not one of the great left critics in the United States have dared say what Harvard Law School Professor Roberto Unger said last week. 'President Obama must be defeated in the coming election.' "
which begs the question:
is this motley crew really comprised of "great left critics"?
personally, i'm quite sure they are nothing of the kind.
---
We make ourselves slaves to make ourselves free, and when the shackles start to rub we confidently predict the emergence of new, more comfortable designs.
- Paul Kingsnorth
Posted by WinstonSmith | June 20, 2012 4:13 PM
Posted on June 20, 2012 16:13
Epic, Owen. Epic!
Posted by Brian M | June 20, 2012 7:04 PM
Posted on June 20, 2012 19:04
"Epic" ain't the word, man.
This is Paine's answer to Mexico City Blues.
Posted by Mike Flugennock | June 20, 2012 8:02 PM
Posted on June 20, 2012 20:02
But, seriously, folks...
What Paine's trying to say, I think -- to crush all that jazz poetry down to a two-and-a-half-minute Ramones song -- is that given the Democrats' epic fail of the past four years, the only chance they have of keeping hold of Big White Massuh's House is to divert attention like a muthafucka, brandish any kind of positive achievement no matter how pathetically flimsy, and crank up an FUD campaign that would make Steve Ballmer blush. It's not surprising that all the Democratic mouthpieces on MSNBC discuss items like the gay marriage "support" announcement in terms of how well it might divert voters' attention from the economy.
After a decade or more of lesser-eviling and scaremongering, the accumulated failures and hypocrisies of the Donkeycrats have reduced their cheerleaders to whining "but the Republicans would be worse!" and claiming that we're part of the problem if we don't vote -- and vote Democratic (remember "a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush"?).
It's that kind of rank pathetic behavior -- even more than their complicity in brutality abroad and oppression at home -- that makes me want to knee the Democratic Party in the groin and, once it's on the ground doubled up in pain, kick it in the teeth and spit on it.
bah bah bah baaaahhhhh
ba bah bah bah baaaahhhhh,
i wanna be sedated!
Posted by Mike Flugennock | June 20, 2012 8:25 PM
Posted on June 20, 2012 20:25
it probably would have made a better post
if i had written about that flug
but i didn't
i wrote about some damn
self fancy-ing fool's
take
on mass voting systems
as a means of repression
including spooky shit like
add in enough tolerence
and
democracy becomes
its own opposite anti-dmocracy
and then tumbles into the ultimate pwog banality
vote green party
no soul mates
just don't fuckin vote for anyone
register your rejection of the system itself
i hasten to add i don't mean ballot boxing in general
just selecting a choice for "high office "
as in
displayng
my preference in emperors
not my utter rejection of emperors
Posted by op | June 22, 2012 9:31 AM
Posted on June 22, 2012 09:31
brian i gues you didn't read it
90 % is quotation
my contribution was
limited to a few hype-q's and spear chucks
err and a 70's yankee maoist sum up
Posted by op | June 22, 2012 9:34 AM
Posted on June 22, 2012 09:34