Speaking of Facebook, a few months back there seemed to have been some sort of flare up of Reagan worship. It may have been due to the Republican nomination process. Probably the candidates invoke Reagan as if he's some sort of hero. People post pictures like the one to the left with talk of all of his "freedom" promotion.This is a bitter pill to swallow because Reagan is nothing but a mass murderer. And I'm an argumentative guy. I want to try and dispel these completely false notions that my friends and family have. But as many people already know, friends and family don't always react positively to this sort of thing.
I've gone through stages on Facebook. Sometimes I argue a bit, but I generally don't post controversial claims myself. If others take it upon themselves to post something political I take that as a sign that they are interested in some critical feedback. Well, that has proved to be mistaken. I've done that and I think many are ready to disown/disfriend me, if they haven't already. I'm compelled to just take out my frustrations here.
Reagan is nothing short of purveryor of genocide. I say that not to be inflammatory, but in the legal sense. Genocide is generally understood to be the mass extermination of peoples of a particular race or culture. But as originally understood in legal documentation it included extermination of groups that shared a political ideology. Stalin through political maneuvering was able to alter the law so that genocide didn't include extermination due to political ideology because if that qualified as genocide Stalin would be guilty. The political ideology qualification was excised from the law, and so as the law stands today Reagan may not be guilty of genocide. But this Stalin modification is illegitimate in the eyes of some legal scholars and also I think the the eyes of most normal, non sociopaths.
To take just one of a myriad of Reagan's horrors look into the El Mozote massacre. The peoples of Latin America didn't prefer Reagan's (and prior administration's) so called free market economic policies. The US government has been determined to implement them in any case. When the people are informed and oppose the system you want to impose the only way to sustain it is through violence and repression. At El Mozote in El Salvador a US trained death squade entered the village, tortured and murdered all the men, raped and murderd all the women, including girls as young as 10, and then bludgeoned and burned up the children that had just watched their parents get murdered. When news of this broke Reagan denounced the reporters as liars and the rest of the right wing machine proceeded with a smear campaign. Reporters were treated as Communists. The NY Times felt the pressure and demoted the man that had reported on the massacre, Raymond Bonner. He subsequently left the paper. All of the reporting was later confirmed as true. The death squad went on to continue to rape and murder with Reagan's backing, including the murder of six priests along with a housekeeper and her daugter.Tell friends and family that and they'll immediately become very defensive and hostile. And I understand that. I used to be a Reagan worshiper as well. People should not feel guilty that they are unaware of this stuff or that they worship a mass murderer. There is an intensive propaganda effort in the US that normal people are subjected to, and this is difficult to overcome.
But Reagan primarily killed communists...so that make it okay. :-)
ReplyDeletej/k....sortof.
Today we only kill terrorists.
ReplyDelete"If others take it upon themselves to post something political I take that as a sign that they are interested in some critical feedback. Well, that has proved to be mistaken."
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting that Jon thinks it is his duty to correct those so called injustices using only the knowledge he has gained from writing and readings from others. The President has 100 times the information you have on every subject and every potential threat to our freedom. What you actually do not know, what you can't know.
For me, your thoughts emulate arm chair football coaches. Those guys who wake up on Saturday, surf the net for a couple hours and then suddenly they are ready to make game day decisions. During the game they complain and whine - why did you make that call coach or why is that guy in the game. After the game these guys - like you - are all over the net telling anyone willing to listen that they know better than an entire coaching staff who has put in 80 hours that week per man, watching, scouting and planning. These coaches have done the work - they know their opponents, they know where and why they can be beat, they have the scouting reports - they have the data to make certain decisions on game day based on down, distance, personal, game time situation, previous play ran, opponents formation, wind condition, sun direction and about 5 other factors. Until your in the war room - until you actually have to make national security decisions - I am going tomhave to side with the Coach and Coaching staff on this one Jon. It is quite possible, maybe likely that the coaching staff made a bad call here, but again I am going with those individuals who put in the work and the game plan on Americas behalf.
Today the coach and his staff are Obama and his administration. You won't question them?
ReplyDeleteIn regards to their policies and social agenda - absolutely 100%. In regards to National Security - those decisions are far more difficult to make an intelligent evaluation.
ReplyDeleteI'll ask you a simple question - if you were President and a folder was placed on your desk with evidence that a person of power and influence in another country was planning on committing crimes against his people and would threaten our way of life - would you be able to say the words to take that person out?
You won't question Obama as long as he says that what he's doing is in regards to our national security. Really?
ReplyDeleteIf I was President and I was told I needed to send our boys to go and kill some other people and this was necessary because our way of life was in danger I would immediately consider our universal experience over the last 60 years. Our boys have been sent to war for only one reason. Protect the interests of wealthy investors. Our leadership sells it to the public as if it were necessary for our security. Every single aggressor always does that. Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao, Saddam, you name it. They always say they must attack for security reasons when in the end it's usually for money and power. So I'm very sketpical.
And by the way, since we are so uninformed compared to our great leader what we see in the picture makes sense. He was carrying that boy off probably to the river where he bashed his head against the rocks. I'm not joking, that's how they killed these children. And Reagan covered it up. And got an airport named after him. We should all just shut up and accept that in your mind?
ReplyDeleteNo - but if your suggesting that Ronald Reagan sat in a room and gave an Executive Order to bash a child's head into a rock then you are a moron. Did men down the chain of command begin interpreting the directive differently? Did men with evil intentions do evil things - yes they did, but to think that Ronald Reagan was directly involved here is like me blaming you and holding you accountable for Bill Ayers bombing and killing people because you have a similar belief.
ReplyDeleteYou'd have made a good, unquestioning Nazi, Chad.
ReplyDeleteMore like a good Revolutionist or Libertarian. I would not invade another mans home or another country (if put in charge) to press my beliefs on them, but if you come to my house or in my country to press your beliefs on me then you best be ready to die for those beliefs my friend - know that.
ReplyDeleteI say this to you all the time - your freedom to be you allows me the freedom to be free from you. I promise that I will not (by force or by law) make you participate in what I believe in - I only ask that you do the same in return.
If you want to pool the 150 million Liberals together - offer free health care, gun free towns with abortion clinics on every corner where you use only wind and solar to power at your town and limit every company to a specific profit margin then I will back you the whole entire way - BUT you can not take a dime from me to do it sir. I want to be able to create and contribute to my own state - to create and uphold the laws and ideas that I believe in and support.
This is so very simple Jon - take the power away from the Government - strip them down to do only what the Constituion outlines in the enumerated powers and allow each State to be ran by the elected officials as they see fit. No Gov't money can pass down, each State will decide by the people what social laws should be passed and if you don't agree - you move to another state. This idea that 330 million people must live under one single theory is absurd. Let Texas have drills on every corner, let California opens its borders and have $12/gallon gas and lets just see which States attract more people and become more healthy. If Michigan residents want Universal Mandated Healthcare - vote it in and pay for it. You can't take a dollar from another state to do it, but you have the right to pass the law and you have the right to live like that. I would simply move to a state that carries more of my values and you would live in a State that shared yours. It fair - it makes sense and ultimately people should (in theory) be happier. If they are not happy and another State is doing it better then the people will elect new leadership that will then take that State in a different direction.
That is how the founding fathers setup this country - limited gov't with individual powers given to the States to make their own decisions. Unless you do not believe that your ideas could live and breath on their own then you should have no objections my friend and we should work together to rally the people to strip gov't of this power to be handed back to the States so you and I can have the ability to really make changes instead of talking about it. You know full well that Central Planning and Socialism will never take hold in America fully so here a chance to make it happen on the State level which is much easier to implement if possible.
Not that is how to do it.
A Revolutionist? Come on. Chad, you are the good football player that doesn't question authority. You take orders and execute them because coach knows more than us, right? Authoritarians naturally oppose independent thought. Do as you are told.
ReplyDeleteMy idea of freedom is that I should have control over the decisions that affect me only. So for instance if I want to wear a pink shirt that's my business. What if I want to dump trash and oil in your yard. Or maybe just slightly upstream from your yard. Is that my freedom to be me? I am not an island. Sometimes what I might do wouldn't affect you and other times it would. In the cases where it does affect you I think you should have a say. That means my freedoms are constrained.
Don't just repeat slogans. Think about what you are saying.
And by the way, there's no reason to try more expiraments that wreck countries. Right wingers have had perfect petri dish expiraments. They regarded them as laboratories at the time.
ReplyDeleteI've been talking lately about Chile. A real world expirament. Mass imposition of right wing economic thoery. Had to be at the point of the gun because populations tend to oppose such things. You had an explosion of poverty and unemployment. A collapsed banking system. Finally after about 15 years when malnoutrition has skyrocketed they are forced to do the obvious. State bail out of a collapsed economy that led to more intervention than existed in the prior Socialist administration.
Friedman taught at the University of Chicago and satellite schools were set up all over Latin America. The expirament was tried again in Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia. Always with identical results. Funneling of money from poorer sectors to richer sectors. Soaring malnutrition and poverty. Improved profits for multinationals.
So no, let's not wreck the US like so many other right wing places have been wrecked. You want to live in a right wing economic country? Go to Saipan, Haiti, or the Philippines. Stay away from Japan, Germany, South Korea, the UK, and the US, the more interventionist countries.