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roachboy · 04-18-2009, 08:42 AM

i dunno, pan: i can't for the life of me figure out where the substance is to what you're saying at this point. you seem to have taken it into your head that by pursuing this line of argument--which i find to be absurd--that you're going to get a rise out of these folk who you imagine you oppose somehow. you have tow or three basic moves that you use repeatedly, and the only objective i can make out for doing it is the above.

one move is setting up a straw man "liberal"or öbama supporter (i meant to make scare quotes, but an umlaut came out instead. i like umlauts. mötörhead, for example)
the second is to imply that there is a rational basis for equating obama with facism because all fascism means to you is i don't like it---well that's just a stupid argument. there were perfectly legit and worrisome reasons to see in the bush administration between 9/13/2001 and sometimes in early 2005 a political/legal machine that was heading in a fascist direction--and this in a technical sense--because like it or not there is a technical sense to the term. the move foundered politically sometime in 2005 because the discourse lost traction. as a legal movement--that is as a radical authoritarian rightwing politics advanced through the means of law---what the bush people did is only being dismantled now by the obama administration. and if you think about what that legal framework was, pan, it's some scary shit.
but hey, why bother with that when you can reduce fascism to a meme used in what you reduce political debate to--playground stuff, the kind of thing that third graders indulge.
but it is that when participants make it that--and so in this case, you bear a pretty significant responsibility for reducing debate to the level you claim it already was on.

third is repetition. it's as if you think that repeating the same thing enough times erases the baselessness of what you repeat.
it's a very karlrove idea, except you don't have the institutional reach to actually do it, so it's just silly.

i'm not sure how much more life there is in the thread, but personally i'm starting to see it as a corpse already.

04-18-2009, 08:42 AM	#345 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	i dunno, pan: i can't for the life of me figure out where the substance is to what you're saying at this point. you seem to have taken it into your head that by pursuing this line of argument--which i find to be absurd--that you're going to get a rise out of these folk who you imagine you oppose somehow. you have tow or three basic moves that you use repeatedly, and the only objective i can make out for doing it is the above. one move is setting up a straw man "liberal"or öbama supporter (i meant to make scare quotes, but an umlaut came out instead. i like umlauts. mötörhead, for example) the second is to imply that there is a rational basis for equating obama with facism because all fascism means to you is i don't like it---well that's just a stupid argument. there were perfectly legit and worrisome reasons to see in the bush administration between 9/13/2001 and sometimes in early 2005 a political/legal machine that was heading in a fascist direction--and this in a technical sense--because like it or not there is a technical sense to the term. the move foundered politically sometime in 2005 because the discourse lost traction. as a legal movement--that is as a radical authoritarian rightwing politics advanced through the means of law---what the bush people did is only being dismantled now by the obama administration. and if you think about what that legal framework was, pan, it's some scary shit. but hey, why bother with that when you can reduce fascism to a meme used in what you reduce political debate to--playground stuff, the kind of thing that third graders indulge. but it is that when participants make it that--and so in this case, you bear a pretty significant responsibility for reducing debate to the level you claim it already was on. third is repetition. it's as if you think that repeating the same thing enough times erases the baselessness of what you repeat. it's a very karlrove idea, except you don't have the institutional reach to actually do it, so it's just silly. i'm not sure how much more life there is in the thread, but personally i'm starting to see it as a corpse already. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite