Posted on 02/11/2014 10:01:10 PM PST by cunning_fish
It's hard to say how much of that is true. The Russian Federation has a statist, great power orientation that may be at odds with ordinary Russians wanting to live their own lives freely. At the same time, though, over the last 20 years, Russian has probably been freer and more democratic than at any time in its history. And a "statist, great power orientation" isn't something unique to Russia or to post-communist societies.
Let's put aside the disclosures made on this thread by enterprising FReepers who have brought William S. Lind's Marxist affiliations to our attention…
Since that post it's been made clear by the original poster of the allegations of Lind's Marxism that those allegations were the product of sabotage of Wikipedia. Clearly, the thrust of my comments were never to get involved in a discussion of his Marxism but to react to a justification of thuggery because the thug opposes homosexuality.
Before the Bolshevik revolution people could move freely, own guns without limit, entrepreneurial class was growing under negligible taxation and the country wielded a world class cultural influence. No one doubted that the Russian Empire belonged to the enlightened (as was thought) Europe. Russia always had a strong local-government democracy and with His Majesty’s political reform also had a parliament and a constitution. Courts were by jury and often resulted in acquittals (something virtually impossible under the RF’s judicial system). Putin’s RF has a long time to grow to that level of individual freedom, prosperity and democratic development.
But more importantly, Putin’s system inherits from the Soviet Union and not from the Russian Empire spiritually: it is a top-down system of one-party control and universal top-down criminality. It is not marxist, true, but marxism there was replaced not by free enterprise but by universal government corruption.
Very often the charge of illegitimacy are raised when the man is not compared with Hitler, or the act is not actually compared to the Holocaust, but merely the principle behind the things criticized. This is itself an illegitimate form of argumentation, it distorts the meaning of the target and then knocks down the strawman.
The practice, even when accurately employed, carries a chilling effect against every impulse which undergirds our support of the First Amendment. That impulse should equally support the right of rich, unfettered expression as well as free expression. To place certain historical events or historical persons out of bounds is to practice a kind of censorship which is to be deplored. We see this today in the treatment of Martin Luther King and it has led us into the tyranny of Barack Obama.
Finally, it is not conventionally regarded to be illegitimate, or at least not nearly so, to equate a person or an event to Stalin or to the Soviet gulags. This is not a healthy or accurate view of history and it is inimical to the health of conservatism for us to accede to the practice. For a number of cultural, demographic, and historical reasons the left has gotten away with telling the world that fascism is much worse than communism. As a result, we have less resistance to emerging leftist tyrants like Barack Obama.
I say, let free expression range free and let inaccurate or hyperbolic statements fall of their own weight but let them be made.
My comments had to do with a reaction to a justification of thuggery in office because the thug opposes homosexuality.
Thuggery by its definition means a breach of law, a breach of the rule of law and that has an awful lot to with the Constitution.
Incidentally, whether we agree with the Supreme Court's decision or not (and I do not) it is perfectly legal to engage in sodomy in private in America. This is a ruling of the Supreme Court of the United States and until we depart from Marbury vs. Madison it is our constitutional law and, as such, has a great deal to do with the Constitution.
Or lying, snicky, backstabbing, corrupt, repressive son-of-a-commie bastard.....
Obama doesn’t oppose homosexuality, he celebrates it. And he ignores the Constitution at will.
I think he probably practiced it.
I did not say it is illegitimate; in fact I happen to think that there are several parallels between the rise of Hitler in 1930’s and the rise of Putin in 2000’s. I simply would prefer to talk in less inflammatory terms, because any time someone brings up Hitler the result is that Hitler is discussed, rather than the initial subject.
You mean among adults. It is perfectly legal to engage in sodomy in private in the RF as well.
Understand. Putin IS a thug. The gay propaganda to minors law is, however, a law passed by the parliament of the country rather than decreed by Putin. I happen to think it is a good law. It could be that it is applied in a thuggish way, like any other law in the RF, but that doesn't seem to be your point, does it?
I remember comparing the rise of, not Putin, but Obama to the rise of Hitler and commenting on the parallels. But I did so only after a careful reservation of the scope and intent of the comparison to avoid the problems you describe.
I believe Obama is more of a thug than Putin is.
OK, you are on. In the Hitler Sweepstakes, Putin wins.
Charisma. Putin 0.5: Obama 0.5 (neither is as good orator as Hitler).
Recession. Putin 2: Obama 2.
“Vertical of power”: Putin 3: Obama 3
Confrontation with Catholic Church: Putin 4: Obama 4
What else have you got? But Putin also has...
Losing an existential war that deposed the old regime;
Blaming foreign powers;
Disillusionment with international finance, economic autarchy;
Military buildup;
Surrounded nation mentality;
Steps to reclaim the lost empire where possible;
Alliance with former enemy (USSR for Hitler, China for Putin);
Cultural conservatism;
Longing for “New Europe”;
Admiration for the Anglosphere combined with treating it as an unnecessary enemy;
I probably got more.
Sorry, that is in Obama's corner. But for that, I got 10 in Putin's corner.
>>>Before the Bolshevik revolution people could move freely, own guns without limit, entrepreneurial class was growing under negligible taxation and the country wielded a world class cultural influence. No one doubted that the Russian Empire belonged to the enlightened (as was thought) Europe. Russia always had a strong local-government democracy and with His Majesty’s political reform also had a parliament and a constitution. Courts were by jury and often resulted in acquittals (something virtually impossible under the RF’s judicial system). Putin’s RF has a long time to grow to that level of individual freedom, prosperity and democratic development.
But more importantly, Putin’s system inherits from the Soviet Union and not from the Russian Empire spiritually: it is a top-down system of one-party control and universal top-down criminality. It is not marxist, true, but marxism there was replaced not by free enterprise but by universal government corruption.<<<
I only disagree on two points.
First is a perception of modern Russian judicial system. Yes, it is heavily flawed but not a low acquittal rate is a problem.
In general it is an Inquisition type proceeding, heavily dependent on written testimonies of a victim, witnesses, and first of all a written confession of defendant himself. You probably don’t want to know how these confessions were taken before 2002 reform (it was codified into a more pro-defendant with an independent defence attorney as a must). Anyway, it is a four-layer system starting with an initial complain or report with a patrolman, detective or sheriff (uchastkoviy). The powers of said officials were and still quite limited but it is their duty to perform a ‘pre-investigation’ inquiry and decide is there a case or it is not worth it. They can’t arrest one or search a home etc at that stage. If they fond there is a case, it is getting submitted to the next stage - intestigation. A copy of such a statement goes to a district attorney to check is it groundless or not and said official has a power to dismiss a case. About 95% of all cases are finished at first stage as soon as detectives or sheriffs decided there is no crime or simply there is no resources to make it. Another 2% dismissed by public attorneys who sees no perspective since the early stage. Of only 3% which makes it’s way to investigators who actually has power to arrest a suspect or search his home etc about 20% are closed. You can imagine they have serious problems with confessions on that stage as soon as there is a defence attorney present during interrogation and no tortures available. After the rest 80% cases are finished (and it is a long scrupulous business there) they have to be submitted back to a public attorney who is deciding is it worth to bring it to a judge and jury or not. Another 10% cases are getting closed at that stage. Acquittal is a court is an effective career killer for every of said officials. It is also an at least a million ruble lawsuit paid by the government from the pocket or this sheriff, investigator and district attorney.
Here is the key to low acquittal level in Russia. The problem are criminals who are walking freely. No risky cases are ever going to court unless there is a heavy pressure from public through media.
Our Republic has never before been confronted with a chief executive who might actually want to see the end of the United States as a nationstate. It is conceivable, and I admit this is a leap of speculation, that Barak Obama, as an indirect product of The Frankfurt School, wishes to see the advent of one-world socialism and recognizes the United States as the single greatest obstacle to obtaining that goal. If he is in fact a socialist one worlder, Obama could very well exploit his treaty making powers and utterly enervate America.
THE OBAMA PATHOLOGY
The idea of the Authoritarian Personality originated in The Frankfurt School as a means of undermining the position of the father within the family circle and thereby undermine the family itself and ultimately the nation as a bulwark against communism. It was heavily larded with pseudo-Freudian analysis and was expanded to subvert all institutionalized authority. Every season we see an article, usually by some college professor with too much time in his hands or sometimes by psychiatrists acting either singly or in gaggles, opining that the current president, if he be Republican, is somehow psychologically deficient. No Republican president or Republican candidate in my lifetime has escaped this ritual psychoanalysis.
A recent excrescence of this genre is the book by Naomi Wolf in which she ludicrously argues that America, led by George Bush, is on the verge of descending into fascism. I have posted my objection to this sort of pseudoscience and I have tried to debunk this cheap propaganda so I am reluctant to engage hypocritically in the same game now. Well, I am going to do it anyway. I aim to indict about half of our whole society. The half, and likely more than half, that will vote for Barak Obama. My psychological conclusions do not pretend to the trappings of the "science" of the psyche and adorned with the word games of Freudian analysis, rather they are rooted in common sense.
The conclusion of anyone with common sense who has seen the films of innocent children singing their Obama songs or who has watched the quasi-military chanting and saluting of the Obama Youth in military garb must conclude that there is something very, very wrong with these people. I remember when I first saw the YouTube Children singing their Obama song I became conscious after a while that my mouth was gaping open, so appalled was I. My reaction to seeing the paramilitary gang marching into the karate hall was a mixture of embarrassment that these kids would make such fools of themselves and anger that adults would so brazenly manipulate children. Then I felt a creeping sense of unease that there was something potentially very sinister going on. Dear merciful God, this is Orwellian!
Beyond a very healthy repugnance to the spectacle of brainwashed children put on display, beyond the inescapable Maoist symbolism of it all, a commonsense person asks, what kind of man would permit this to go on in his name? What kind of parent would not seek to protect his child from such a man? What kind of pathology would lead parents who presumably love their children to consign those children to the demons of mind control? How could Americans fall for such a transparent cult of personality?
Unfortunately, we need not be uncertain about what kind of man would permit this grotesquerie to be advanced in his name. History provides us with plenty of examples: Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Kim Jong-Il come to mind and now we add Barak Obama to the list. Why has he not spoken out and repudiated this? Would not a decent man do so if only for the children?
If Obama will not speak out now as a candidate when a little modesty, even false modesty, would advance his chances, what will he do when he gains office with no resistance anywhere on the horizon; no opposition in either the House or the Senate, no voice in traditional media to be raised against him, no institutional resistance on a national level of any kind organized to discourage him? Because he condones this obscenity one must ask, Is Obama really a narcissist as has been claimed? If so, how far will he go when he has the levers of power in his hands when there is no effective resistance to his ego?
How dangerous is Barak Obama?
Is he too dangerous to be put in a place where he could literally get us all killed? Or Is he the indispensable man in some sense? I do not think so. There is nothing in his career that suggests that he is the man for this season. In a time of war he has no military experience. In a time of looming financial disaster, he has no economic credentials. If he is potentially dangerous and if he is not indispensable, why would so many people want to put him in a position where he could do us harm, even get us all killed?
My commonsense explanation is that there must be a pathology, a mass psychosis, that brings people to the point where not only are they eager to make him the most powerful man in the world but they are invoking his name and calling upon him to be their savior. This they do rather than falling on their knees out of fear of The Real God.
This is the Obama pathology.
To a middle-class conservative who instinctively rejects conspiracy theories and normally wants to think the best of people because that's what he learned in Sunday school, this deification of an empty suit is as bewildering as it is frightening. What in the world are these people thinking? Do they not weigh the risks of consigning their fate to an unqualified man, worse, a person tainted his whole life with stunningly dangerous confederates including felons and Communists and terrorists? What is the upside? What is it about this man whose career is utterly uninterrupted by any accomplishment which would motivate these people to risk their children and my children to whatever he might do to them? How do they know? How can they be sure? Don't they have any doubts?
My problem is that I am seeking after that which I cannot find. I want to find an explanation in logic for a phenomenon of emotion. It is easy for middle-class conservatives to overlook the power of emotion even though history provides plenty of examples even within our own culture in America. Can logic explain why so many drank Jim Jonse's Kool aid? Why Charles Manson commanded such blood loyalty? How many cheered OJ Simpson's acquittal? Why did princes Diana's passing traumatize a nation? These are not questions which are answered with everyday commonsense. One almost has to go to the Bible to see the answer in Old Testament allegory which lets us know that evil is and there will always be worshipers of the golden calf.
I fear that in November we conservatives might find ourselves involuntarily embarked upon a journey that is foreign to our epistemology. We may be going into dark places and we might well be pushed into a netherworld where our common sense values are of no use because it is a place where down is up and black is white, a place where gravity does not pull but pushes, a place where we will need a pocket translator in order to converse in English with our government, our children's teachers, and our keepers even though they superficially use the same words we do. We sense we are about to be overwhelmed by forces guided by the ghost of Saul Alinsky.
I fear the downside of the Obama Pathology after his election may extend to dimensions we cannot begin to fasten to our everyday understanding or to our common sense. We have no way of knowing what will come because we don't know anything really about Barak Obama. We do not know if he is purely evil, we do not know if he is a committed communist, we do not know if he is a racist, we do not know if he wishes to see the submergence of the United States into a greater world order, we do not know if he is a megalomaniac, we do not even know, God help us, if he hates America. We do not know, in short, if we are backs - to- the- wall confronted with the Liberals' quadrennial nightmare: A real Authoritarian Personality.
We do know that Barak Obama has already encouraged a cult of personality whose implications are truly frightening and fundamentally un-American.
Obama is closer, that is why. Read some Russian bloggers and the opposite feeling will emerge.
Right, in other words 95% of cases are effectively decided by people easiest to bribe.
we conservatives might find ourselves involuntarily embarked upon a journey that is foreign to our epistemology
That is the center nerve of our failures. American system is simply not designed to defend itself against the obama type.
Regarding similarities to Hitler, and whether Putin is worse or not, I posted it as a pastime. History has patterns, such as, for example, after a devastating defeat the people would seek out a leader who explains the defeat in terms favorable to them and stirs the national energy. That is a Hitler-Putin pattern, but not the Obama pattern.
In D'Souza's "2016", he traces Obama's motivation to anti-colonialism. Do you think that is accurate? I think the movie made a convincing point. If so, analogies to Hitler are especially misplaced, because whatever the outcome, Hitler intended to lead Germany to greatness, and in his pre-war years he had done so. Obama's pattern should be sought in the nation-suicidal leaders of 1960's Europe that dismantled the colonial system and began work on erasing the national personalities of the European people to the point of building an internationalist system of bureaucratic rule.
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