Each day I list the blogs new to the linklist. Want to be added? Use the form, Luke. Entry does not guarantee winning. No purchase necessary. Offer void where prohibited. You must either be a fiery liberal spirit or be in the vanguard of the workers revolution to participate. At a pinch we’ll take dedicated left anarchists and the like as well. No wishy washy centrists need apply. The decision of the judges is final.
Thoughts on the Eve of the Apocalypse
By Bill Connolly
The Sideshow on the dangers of complacency:
When I was a kid, my many Jewish elders had a short-hand phrase they’d use to explain their objections whenever some suggested legislation (censorship, for example) or discrimination against blacks or gays left them gasping in horror: “The Nazis did that.” (Or sometimes just: “The Nazis….”) These were people who remembered how it took place, with not too much disruption of everyday life, at first, and most people going unmolested and therefore not making much of it. Nothing to see here, just a few commies and Jews and a couple of queers, not any of us Normal people…. These were, you understand, people who would have been crushed if their son turned out to be gay or their daughter married “a Negro”, but by god they knew better than to give an inch on these things. They didn’t have to like pornography to know it shouldn’t be illegal – they knew what censorship was about. They understood, with crystal clarity, that there are no good excuses for dismissing people’s civil liberties.
With the carefully stage-managed “public” appearances of Bush to crowds from which all potential Bush detractors (i.e., the ordinary American public) have been removed to “First Amendment zones”, a “free press” that is bought-and-paid for by the administration (doesn’t have to be government-controlled, since they own it anyway), not to mention so many enormous lies that it’s hard to pick which is the Big Lie, comparisons to Nazi Germany seem impossible to avoid. Bear a few things in mind: Hitler had to start somewhere; it wasn’t Kristallnacht on the very first day. It creeps up on you, and then it’s too late. If you wait until they really are putting people in gas chambers and making lampshades out of human skin, then eventually they will probably get around to that as well. Don’t think, “It can’t happen here”; the German people thought so, too. Even the Jewish ones. And Americans spoke with horror of “the camps” even as we were rounding up Japanese Americans and depriving them of both their property and their liberty. Do check out that letter at Talk Left to see what Ashcroft has really been up to.
Pandagon on Chickenhawks:
The chickenhawk argument has virtually nothing to do with the act of not serving in the military – it is instead what that lack of service represents. Chickenhawks are unprincipled prevaricators obsessed with the imperative of “defeating America’s enemies” through the sacrifice and toil of other people. The chickenhawk exists because they took proactive steps towards avoiding the military service they were asked to participate in. What many chickenhawks did (and still do) is to trumpet the military as the ultimate expression of patriotism, especially through membership, even to the point where those who object to this are attacked viciously as “anti-American” or “loony” or one of Rush Limbaugh’s other entries on the short list of bad names for liberals. However, when they were asked to partake in this ultimate expression of love and devotion to the country which they supposedly held so dear, they had more moves than Barry Sanders at the line of scrimmage to get away from serving.
This land is Your Land on why Some Where Communists in Italy:
This is by Giorgio Gaber, Italian singer, author, performer and, as this makes abundantly clear, ex-Communist. A lot of this is very Italian but I left it in because, well, because never mind if you don’t get it. It explains a lot about Italy, really, including what Italians mean by “Communism”. I do hope it falls under fair use. It’s basically satire. I guess.
Tom Tomorrow on which party speaks for real Americans:
We’ve seen this nonsense before, from the likes of Ann Coulter, and I suspect we’re going to be seeing more it, this idea that Democrats are all a bunch of Northeastern elitists completely out of touch with some mythical “real America”–which is, of course, most often promulgated by Northeastern conservative elitists who mostly live in Manhattan or DC. I mean, come on. Anyone who could write that Democrats would “go homeless before toiling as a middle manager at Procter & Gamble” clearly has very little contact with the “real America” for which they profess to speak. The numbers speak for themselves: the last two elections have been statistical dead heats. The country is split straight down the middle. And it should be clear to anyone, even the conservative Upper East Side/Beltway crowd, that fifty percent of the voting public can’t all be investment bankers and doctors (categories which, correct me if I’m wrong, probably contain more than few Republican voters).
Seeing the Forest demonstrates the dangers of the Bush administration’s politicising of the war on terrorism:
It used to be, I would worry about what might happen. I worried about going to Comdex last year because of anthrax. I worried about flying.
Now I think about whether the Bush people have been caught at something they’re trying to distract us from. I wonder what advantage the Republicans are trying to gain. After going down a checklist like this, and then hearing that the Europeans are also worrying, THEN I start to worry that this one might be for real.
This is the consequence of Bush politicizing the war on terrorism. There were several phony terrorism alerts, each one coming immediately after some embarrassing revelation – like the Harken stories hitting the press. Remember when Ashcroft came on TV from Moscow to talk about “dirty bombs” and later we found out the guy had really been caught a month previously? Remember how the terrorist alerts STOPPED after the press started questioning the timing?
The Road to Surfdom comments about somebody’s amazingly original insight that Communism can be thought of as a religion:
Of course, those who follow the science of capitalism exhibit none of these attributes. No unsubstantiated beliefs. No gross simplifications to make a point. No idols and no priestly caste. No central temples and regional churches. No straying sheep. No faith in abstractions, even in the face of evidence. No vision of a better life based on right behaviour. Just Gradgrindian fact. Absolutely nothing like a religion.
The Road to Surfdom has a new address and spiffy new site design.
Take a look at http://www.roadtosurfdom.com/.
I like the new design, though like far too many bloggers Tim Dunlop insist on using a font only readable by microscope.