Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - Tea Party Electee "where's my health care?"

roachboy · 11-18-2010, 10:37 AM

boo hoo, cimmaron.

your political viewpoint is based on an absurd anti-historical division between happy-face markety land and sad-face state-land. you seem to neither know nor care about the history of actually existing capitalism since, say, 1870, which is as good a marker as any for the point where capitalism veered away from the happy-face markety land ideology (by which i mean as an image of what capitalism is) not to speak of reality (1870 marks the creation of the stock market).

it's hard to talk with conservative libertarians beyond a certain point because there is a problem of what counts as historical reality. and this is not simply a matter of discounting what "someone like you" thinks because it's "different"---it's a matter of discounting it because it's factual basis is simply wrong. so it doesn't really matter the edifices that might be constructed from that point. the basic characterization of capitalism since the advent of heavy industry, so from the beginning of what they call monopoly capitalism, is wrong.

that means that the historical account of the development of capitalism as a socio-political order from the late 19th century forward becomes a problem for libertarian positions whereas for other folk it's a point of departure.

if we're in a position such that questions of reference to the empirical world and its system characteristics have to become a variable in order to get to some kumbaya point where any viewpoint, no matter how crackpot its logic and how debilitating its sense of history and the world, has to be accepted simply because it is held by someone, then i don't think we're talking politics at all any more. we're talking religion.

this applies to a much broader swatch of discussion than health care.
the problem seems to me to be that there's no agreement about what constitutes reality because there's no common basis for its historical antecedents.

admittedly this is a place where my academic training as a historian gets in the way of making all nice with people whose viewpoints i take to be whacked out, not because they're stupid or evil, but because their politics force them to play fast and loose with the factual aspects of a very complicated world.

what's at issue here is that you have nothing remotely like a coherent understanding of the intertwined nature of the state and happy-face markety capitalism at this point. you don't know about the last hundred years of intertwining.

that plus by all appearances you confuse ayn rand with a philosopher. that's just nutty.

11-18-2010, 10:37 AM	#44 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	boo hoo, cimmaron. your political viewpoint is based on an absurd anti-historical division between happy-face markety land and sad-face state-land. you seem to neither know nor care about the history of actually existing capitalism since, say, 1870, which is as good a marker as any for the point where capitalism veered away from the happy-face markety land ideology (by which i mean as an image of what capitalism is) not to speak of reality (1870 marks the creation of the stock market). it's hard to talk with conservative libertarians beyond a certain point because there is a problem of what counts as historical reality. and this is not simply a matter of discounting what "someone like you" thinks because it's "different"---it's a matter of discounting it because it's factual basis is simply wrong. so it doesn't really matter the edifices that might be constructed from that point. the basic characterization of capitalism since the advent of heavy industry, so from the beginning of what they call monopoly capitalism, is wrong. that means that the historical account of the development of capitalism as a socio-political order from the late 19th century forward becomes a problem for libertarian positions whereas for other folk it's a point of departure. if we're in a position such that questions of reference to the empirical world and its system characteristics have to become a variable in order to get to some kumbaya point where any viewpoint, no matter how crackpot its logic and how debilitating its sense of history and the world, has to be accepted simply because it is held by someone, then i don't think we're talking politics at all any more. we're talking religion. this applies to a much broader swatch of discussion than health care. the problem seems to me to be that there's no agreement about what constitutes reality because there's no common basis for its historical antecedents. admittedly this is a place where my academic training as a historian gets in the way of making all nice with people whose viewpoints i take to be whacked out, not because they're stupid or evil, but because their politics force them to play fast and loose with the factual aspects of a very complicated world. what's at issue here is that you have nothing remotely like a coherent understanding of the intertwined nature of the state and happy-face markety capitalism at this point. you don't know about the last hundred years of intertwining. that plus by all appearances you confuse ayn rand with a philosopher. that's just nutty. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite Last edited by roachboy; 11-18-2010 at 10:42 AM..