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Who is your political/ideological role model?


Pong Messiah
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I despise pundits. Why waste an hour of my time letting Bill O'Hannity or Lou Maddow or whomever insult my intelligence when I can experience the same visceral good vs. evil excitement from the WWE -- only with more self-awareness and honesty? And while I do not hold them in contempt, academics tend to be tiresome and boorish, and well... too academic to be of any real use. Soft clean hands and an abstract understanding of everything. Get a real jerb!

 

But every one in awhile, somebody says something that just sets my heart singing. Something that lights up my brain like a Christmas tree (could it be a seizure?), because they're somehow saying exactly what I think, only in a far more colorful and articulate manner than I could have ever dreamed possible. And inevitably, those words stem from a comedian, entertainer, athlete, or some other intellectual lightweight, and I am immediately ashamed for my feelings of wonder. Am I a high school girl or what?

 

Anyway, without further ado, my role model is: GEORGE CARLIN. Overrated as a comedian, underrated as a philosophizationist:

The decay and disintegration of this culture is astonishingly amusing if you are emotionally detached from it. I have always viewed it from a safe distance, knowing I don't belong; it doesn't include me, and it never has. No matter how you care to define it, I do not identify with the local group. Planet, species, race, nation, state, religion, party, union, club, association, neighborhood, improvement committee; I have no interest in any of it. I love and treasure individuals as I meet them, I loathe and despise the groups they identify with and belong to. So, if you read something in this book that sounds like advocacy of a particular political point of view, please reject the notion. My interest in "issues" is merely to point out how badly we're doing, not to suggest a way we might do better.

 

 

Don't confuse me with those who cling to hope. I enjoy describing how things are, I have no interest in how they "ought to be." And I certainly have no interest in fixing them. I sincerely believe that if you think there's a solution, you're part of the problem. My motto: **** Hope!

 

P.S. Lest you wonder, personally, I am a joyful individual with a long, happy marriage and a close and loving family. My career has turned out better than I ever dreamed, and continues to expand. I am a personal optimist but skeptic about all else. What may sound to some like anger is really nothing more than sympathetic contempt. I view my species with a combination of wonder and pity, and I root for it's destruction. And please don't confuse my point of view with cynicism; the real cynics are the ones who tell you everything's gonna be all right.

 

P.P.S. By the way, if, by chance, you folks do manage to straighten things out and make everything better, I still don't wish to be included.

Yay! **** hope! **** it forever!

 

:eek:

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Good call on Carlin. Of today's pundits and politicians in general, there are few mainly because they don't tend to reflect my views. Bill Mahar and youtube pundit the Amazing Atheist have a lot to say that I tend to like as well. A little to the right are Trey Parker and Matt Stone (of South Park legendry) who I appreciate. In general, if you don't like "God, guns and guts" type stuff, but hate political correctness as well, then you're generally up my alley.

 

Going back in time, I'm still a fan of post war British P.M Clement Attlee. Some of his policies could, in retrospect, have been done better, while others are not well suited to today's realities and understandings of economics and international relations. Wholesale nationalization of industry serves no purpose (though it might have been necessary given the state of things post war) and the ending of the British mandates in Palastine and elsewhere could have been handled a LOT better than they were. Still and all, though, I think he's an example of good statesmanship. Even Margaret Thatcher spoke well of him, claiming him a "gentleman and a patriot, all substance and no show, in direct contrast to the politicians of the 90s", or something to that effect.

 

Indeed. It's hard to imagine a leader so committed to results over grandstanding these days. He rejected "futile left-wingism" in favor of pragmatism and caused rifts in his own party, but without selling the soul of Labour a-la Blair et. al 40 years later. His postwar government reduced poverty and improved working conditions considerably, yet had none of the vicarious self loathing so often seen in leftist politicians, even becoming a titled Lord. His introspective, laconic and genial personality made him something of a stick, and as a war leader he would have been a disaster (we ALL have to give it up to Churchill here), but he was among the earliest party leaders in war time Britain to oppose appeasement and stand up to Hitler. Also he was among the pioneers of LGBT rights, establishing the homosexual law reform society in the late 50s - eventually decriminalizing homosexual acts and helping to usher in a less prudish atmosphere in the stronghold of Victorian morality. And all this with NONE of the Pride Day grandstanding so prevalent these days. Regarding religion and morality, he said he liked the "ethics of Christianity" but not the "mumbo jumbo."

 

Cripes man, what's not to like? Were his the example followed by progressives these days, we wouldn't be having a government shut down, that's for sure. Nor much of the culture-war tomfoolery passing for politics these days across the spectrum while serious social and economic problems go unaddressed. Lord Attlee, you are dearly missed and desperately needed.

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Guest El Chalupacabra

I don't think I have a role model per se. Probably the closest thing would be Ben Stein. I disagree with him on some ideological issues (IE his paranoid assertion that Evolution being taught in school infringes on people who believe in Intelligent Design and both should be taught concurrently), but I do respect the fact that he is at least able to entertain the opposing view without getting venomously hyperbolic the way other conservatives like Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, etc, do, and he usually is civil towards people with whom he disagrees with. He even crosses the aisle from time to time to support people who make sense, even if they are a democrat.

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Guest El Chalupacabra

I am convinced that Ann Coulter is a 3,000 year old ghoul re-animated with black magic, that must eat live babies and kittens every night for sustinence.

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and as a war leader he would have been a disaster (we ALL have to give it up to Churchill here),

 

Now now now, Kurgan, let's not get ahead of ourselves here. Churchill's refusal of an armistice with Germany in June 1940 was quite possibly the worst thing any one person has done in the 20th Century, if not the entire history of Western Civilization.

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Not to mention that it's debatable whether the Holocaust even happens if WW2 doesn't. Or if it does, it most likely looks different. And in any case, the Holocaust cannot be blamed on any one man, whereas the European Theater of WW2 can be almost entirely blamed on a handful of men, Churchill being one. I'll say it now and again- Churchill is one of the most evil men to have ever lived. Period.

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Hence my preference for Churchill's domestic political rival. Though still too late in doing so, Labour was the first major party to recognize that there was not going to be any appeasement here and urged rearmament. Still and all, once the bombs started falling, Churchill did an admirable job of rallying the Britons, even if the war was, as things stood in spring 1940, unwinnable for the U.K. Beyond that, he was far more lucky than he was good. The best military analysis I've ever heard says that wars are won by the side that makes the fewest mistakes. So it was here. The allies did not win WWII; Hitler lost it.

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Are you ****ing naïve enough to believe that an armistice would have materially changed things? Certainly, it could have altered the overall complexion of how WWII would have shaped up. But I'm sorry, inaction on signing a treaty is a VASTLY differently thing than actively making the decision to commit genocide. If you can't see the difference, your Harvard education is obviously worth a lot less than I thought.

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Hence my preference for Churchill's domestic political rival. Though still too late in doing so, Labour was the first major party to recognize that there was not going to be any appeasement here and urged rearmament.

 

I think you don't understand my argument. It's not critizing Chamberlain or Churchill for being appeasers. Rather, they were aggressive war-mongerers that caused WW2.

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Are you f-cking naïve enough to believe that an armistice would have materially changed things?

 

Are you really naive enough to believe that WW2 would've unfolded the same way if the UK was not involved? The only reason the UK was even there in the first place was the security guarantee given by Chamberlain (despite his popular reputation as an appeaser, he was actually a war-mongerer) to Poland on March 31, 1939. And the fact that they refused further peace talks because Churchill, possibly at the insistence of Lord Halifax and others, was hell bent on some good ol fashioned war... really George W like. The only real difference between him and W is that the British happened to "win" the war, if you can even call it that, since their Empire was in f-cking shambles by the 60s.

 

Bottom line is this Ev- it's not clear that Germany even goes to war with Poland in the first place if not for the UK security guarantee. And even if there is an Eastern European war, most likely Germany and the USSR fight it out and the rest of the world is for better (sort of like what we're doing in Syria now.. just letting the a$sholes duke it out). But in no case is Churchill triggering a freaking war that kills at least 30 million people, dismembering his own f-cking empire, the better option. Not to mention it led to the US becoming the world's only superpower, a dubious honor, given that we seem to be falling under the same fate as the British- imperial over-stretch and general incompetence.

 

Churchill was garbage. He started a world war, even one that he admitted to FDR was "un-necessary." F-ck that guy. And f-ck you for thinking otherwise. The victors re-write history in their own image Ev, you should know that. Go wiki the security guarantee given by Chamberlain to Poland and get back to me.

 

Hmmm ... clearly you're on to something different then. Elaborate?

 

Ehh.. I think my posts both above and just recently pretty much cover it. Read carefully, LK.

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I DO see your point. I've always wondered why the British Conservatives didn't just sit back and play "let's you and him fight" with Germany vs the U.S.S.R, especially since Hitler was fairly up-front about eastern Europe being where his territorial ambitions lay, and use the ensuing hostilities to re-arm themselves. The Conservative elite kind of saw eye to eye with the Nazis on more things than they'd care to admit these days - anti communism, imperialism, race supremacy, romantic nationalism and the like, so I think the basis of such an agreement existed. The victor in a Nazi-Soviet war would be weakened by the effort, and therefore more easily put in their place by an Anglo-American alliance, should doing so prove necessary. They instead saw Hitler as the primary threat to their security and acted as they did, for their own reasons, I suppose. My point, however, is once the hostilities began, Churchill did a fair job of rallying the British people. You know, "Their finest hour" and all that.

 

I also think that little Adolf does deserve at least some of the blame here, mind you..

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