So Much For That Idea
The US is losing the war on terror. That’s the assessment of the nation’s top foreign-policy, intelligence, and national-security leaders from across the ideological spectrum. In this year’s Terrorism Index, a survey released Monday by Foreign Policy magazine, 84 percent of these experts believe the nation is losing the war on terror, while more than 90 percent say the world is growing more dangerous for Americans.
So much for Bush’s “making American’s safer” gig ‘eh?
That’s prompted a variety of leaders to call for a complete rethinking of the nation’s strategy.
Oh……. that’s gonna go over like a lead balloon ain’t it – let me save you the trouble of listening to how Fox News or any of the upper-right-quadrant wingnut talk radio hosts, will deal with this.
…. they are a bunch of terrorist supporting, Bush hating, Saddam loyalist, bin Laden loving, freedom hating, anti-American, communists who loath the fact that the [self proclaimed] greatest nation on the face of the planet, is the decisive world leading beacon of freedom and democracy that it is.
I take it you want to surrender unconditionally and let whomever do whatever in the world and in your country, following invasion, occupation, enslavement, slaughter… as long as they’re evil. And especially if they have darker-looking skin than you. Big bonus if they believe in “Allah” or at least in guys like Saddam.
Yep. You’re the sort of chap who’d gladly submit to those who will do whatever they wish with you before they behead you or blow your brains out… before doing same to your family, friends, neighbors, fellow countrymen… traitor, you definitely are.
Millions of people, if they could tell you from they other side, would tell you that submission’s a fucking bitch and that they wish they had put up fierce resistance before being killed by all those wonderful evil people you apparently love to love.
You’re the sort of guy with a death wish. You don’t want to live; you hope that evil people will come and kill you. Darn that nasty George Bush to Heck for doing his job as President and stopping this from happening- he’s taking away your human right to have people invade and occupy your country and chop off your head! You don’t care if they do it to everyone else, ’cause you only care about yourself, right?
I guess you must hate yourself for being a white guy who is free and enjoys the benefits of living in a free country. You apparently don’t think you deserve any better than those who live in, say, Rwanda or Iran or Saudi Arabia or China or North Korea… but you don’t value freedom, so rather than liberating those who aren’t free (that’d require war in most cases, and war is a no-no for you), you want the entire world to be non-free, oppressed and tyrannized. As long as everyone’s equally abused and no one’s more fortunate than another, you’ll be happy, right?
That’s fine. But don’t promote the ending of security for everyone else in your country. Taking away our security is taking away our rights.
You like evil people? So move to Zibmabwe, maybe. Real easy to lose your rights there, ’cause Mr. Mugabe hates the fucking Honkies with a passionate intensity, though he’s not necessarily racist, as he’s an equal opportunity murderer, something which you probably admire… a non-discriminating murderer…
Um, no. Try again, please.
My dear Mr Boggles,
Greetings from the bunker, it behooves me to state right up front that your type doesn’t last long around here. Some consider that a good thing, others a bad thing, and still others, just a thing.
This will not happen because you get driven away, or banned, or censored, but because the terrorist loving, self-loathing, Bush hating, rhetoric is something that is only rarely used anymore; and we’ve found that those that do use it have little of substance to say.
Essentially we get bored with it.
Your being out of touch with the reality of what progressives say these days, the rhetoric they employ… shall we say, boggles the mind… If they back off a bit, it’s temporary at best. Whatever non-progressives do, they employ the opposite tactic, claiming to be rational when the opponent is passionate in argument, while next time, when the opponent will be purely logical and fact-oriented, the progressives play the hurt-badly victim, cryingly/angrily declaring that they’re “harmed/offended/demeaned/dehumanized/made to feel unwelcome, etc.” by “such hatred”… Oh, yes, we non-progressives (yes, us scary right-wingnuts and so on) have figured out your tactics.
Further, to explain why you’re clearly unaware of current rhetorical employment of your progressive ilk, progressives demonstrate that they employ a cerebral filter of sorts, which allows them to hear only what they want to hear. Whatever is said gets filtered out according to the programming of said filter, such programming originating significantly more from without rather than within.
Seems they have a similar filter to edit what they see.
Proof? The double standard they bear between Israel and the Arab World who attacks her in first blood. This double standard… plainly, ah, boggles the mind and convinces the reasonable person that progressives are either incredibly dumb or evil, possibly both.
Progressives are quite boggling in their mentality, without a shadow of a doubt. You demonstrate your own boggling mode of brain operation with your posts.
Nevertheless, my good chap, do enjoy the weekend. Don’t imbibe and drive.
PS, do you call yourself “The Bunker” in an ironic way? Surely you aren’t as that grouch Archie Bunker from that silly Seventies’ show with the incessantly flushing upstairs loo?
My “progressive ilk”? I think you’d probably have to define a phrase like that before I was sure about what you were saying… it’s true, there’s no pleasing everyone. I end up butting heads with what are supposedly my progressive brethren over things like gun control, the restriction of personal liberties, and the nanny state we live in, for not being progressive enough, and with the upper-right-quadrant for being too “progressive”, what ever that may be.
Check the political compass, I’m really more of a left leaning anarchist than anything else…. is that what we’re calling “progressive” these days?
I have enjoyed the week-end so far, thanks for your concern, and I hope you have a good one as well. It’s been quiet, a short bike ride to visit a friend who has just returned from a vacation, and other bit of a ride tomorrow (if it doesn’t rain) to help another friend who has a big ‘ole tree laying in his backyard that needs cutting up and stacking… I shall probably even get a meal out of it.
As for “The Bunker”, well, that’s short form for “the stageleft basement bunker”, you didn’t think that balbulican, treehugger, Lily, Max, and I accomplished all of this from an apartment building or a townhouse in the burbs did you? Hells bells no my good man, world domination (benevolent of course) can only be accomplished from a decent bunker – everyone knows that.
You can read of our origins here, and there is a picture of Lily in the bunker (the hall of hero’s actually) here… research my good man, research, ya gotta do it.
PS: I’m a huge fan of Carroll O’Connor and his work, every generation needs a man who can deride and ridicule the societal attitudes of the day to the extent he did – if comedians and satirists like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are not green with envy over what he accomplished they should be.
Progressive means “radical” (leftist) and even “communist”. You needn’t be a communist to be a progressive, although today communists will call themselves progressives as the word “communist” scares far too many folks.
A left-leaning anarchist qualifies as a progressive.
“Radical leftist” could be a good basic definition.
The word progressive is a nice-sounding euphemism for what radical leftists are and stand for. I don’t consider leftism to be progressive, however. For, to simply advocate something different, a change, etc., isn’t necessarily “progressive”, unless one posits that destructiveness can be considered progress, which the reasonable person won’t.
However, I think you probably already know the real, as opposed to euphemestic, definition of such words as “progressive”. So if you do, why bother to implore for a definition? Benefit of readers, perhaps?
Then again, one’s def’n of a word may not conform to another’s. For yourself, it may be a positive one, but for me, not. In political/ideological conflict, one may use “progressive” or “liberal” or “leftist” as an epithet, just as one may use “right-wing” thusly.
Understand that leftist strategy and tactics have been analyzed and understood. Leftists once benefited from the benefit of the doubt, with people being seduced by their humanistic, nice-sounding, imploring, moralizing rhetoric into thinking that “left” and “liberal” and “progressive” are good things. But it didn’t take very long for reasonable people to awaken to the reality, as reality cannot be sugarcoated with lovely labels/rhetoric and hidden from aggressively prying eyes and minds. Now, more people than ever oppose your radical agenda. And more are leaving your movement. Of course, you’ll deny this. Which is fine with reasonable people.
Well then, if you define left leaning anarchist as progressive then, under your defination, I guess that would make me one – but, and there is always a but isn’t there, lets look at issues as opposed to generic catch-all phrases.
Are progressives anti-war?
Are progressives secular?
What do progressives think of the role of the state?
What to progressives think of things like gun control?
What do progressives think of property ownership?
Just exactly what do you think my radical agenda is anyway? It is, by the way, radical, but I’m interested in knowing if you know what it is as opposed to simply thinking you know what it is because you, based on your definition, have labeled me “progressive”.
Actually, more and more people seem to be headed in, what I think, is the appropriate direction as opposed to leaving some movement (maybe you could tell me what that movement is), not, unfortunately, in droves, but every river starts as a trickle somewhere doesn’t it?
I do note that within all of this you have not addressed anything in the original post except to confirm the
- portion of it