OK, this definitely tops the "lots of SI folks would like to see me dead" post - an entire SI thread is composed of brutal murderers and torturers - can you believe that?:
Message 22683142
On Lindy Bill and his thread: "Politics for Pros"
I don’t know about you all but I have to admit to being fascinated with Lindy Bill and his thread on SI – “Politics for pros-moderated.” (“Moderated” means anybody who offers a contrary, non-neocon opinion is banned).
Boy, he's off base there. I've noticed that most such liberal minded folks seem to withdraw from PfP themselves when their views are contradicted and in preference for an echo-chamber where they can get consistent validation. JohnM, Eleutheria, Lane3 are examples off the top of my head of people who have posted on PfP, weren't banned, yet withdrew on their own.
I of course have been banned, which if fine. If Lindy wants to run a closed shop, who am I to argue?
But as I say, I am fascinated. He offers something actually rather rare --- a chance to look into the soul of a movement.
In my humble opinion, if you want to understand collective evil, that is to say, if you want to understand how human beings can get themselves into a place where they kill other human beings on a mass scale, you should follow Lindy’s thread, and look at what he and his mates are doing and HOW they do it – HOW they react to events and arguments, and HOW they explain themselves to themselves.
Was it Turgenev (the Russian writer) who said that if you want to describe the Don River, you should tell how it looks as reflected in a shard of glass on one of its banks?
“Politics for Pros” is that shard of glass, and the Don River that you are able to see reflected in it is the Gulag, the mass killing of millions of human beings in the Soviet Union, or the justifications that excuse the endless brutality of Israel against her neighbors.
Now, understand, I am not saying that Lindy Bill is Stalin. Yeah, saying that would make you nuts. Obviously he is not, and I very much doubt that he personally would carry out acts of brutality, murder or torture. But he is with great energy and persistence, in his own small way, creating a mind-set where less intelligent, more unhinged, and cruder people can do just that.
Ah, get that. Lindybill isn't Stalin. It's the rest of the folks on the thread - the less intelligent, more unhinged, and cruder folks - who are the brutal mass murderers and torturers.
In “Politics for Pros” you are able to the Soviet Py-Ops apparatus writ small, i.e., you can see a place where there is censorship (such as Lindy is able to exercise within the circumscribed range of his little authority), demonization, heavy handed and relentless dehumanization of “them,” equally heavy-handed and equally relentless sanctification of “us,” the using of such power as he has to close off the world, in order to have to deal with a reality only of his own choosing, and much, much more, all right before our very eyes.
What total bullshit! Check PfP's ban to bookmark ratio. It's pretty low for moderated threads. Now compare the similar ratio for liberal echo-chambers like Baker's View from Left of Center or SuePal's Sioux Nation. That's where you find censorship (people banned after their first post), demonization, and sanctification of "us enlightened folks".
Now of course Lindy and his mates would say that they are anti-communists. Yes, true, they are. But their anti-communism is superficial. They are anti-communists but not anti-Soviet, meaning: they do not fight for the traditional causes of communism. Rather, they fight for other causes, but they use the techniques of the Soviet Union.
There is no doubt in my mind that if the neo-cons were able to gain un-checked power in the USA, by methods legal or otherwise, that soon we would start seeing political murder on a mass scale.
Good Lord!!!!! This guy is loony enough to be DNC chairman.
I suppose then we would find out the stuff that Lindy Bill is made of. Would he swing into opposition? I would hope so, but there is some small part of me that fears that he would end up being an apparatchiki in some bureau somewhere, justifying every step of the way the erection of a neo-con gulag.
Funny that people who are for protecting and spreading democracy around the world are EVIL, while the self-described "good people" go round making excuses for leaving alone real-life Stalins, like Saddam, Nasrallah, and Ahmadinejad. |
