Don't be so anti-something that you're pro bad things.

[onejayhawk]

Anyway, I time travelled to the USSR. It's awesome! You get free lunches, even though I always thought TANSTAAFL.

It wasn't free. You had to get to the Soviet Union. The US Army supplied free meals when I was in Iraq. Same principle.

J

 

[kochman]

Ironic in that Hitler was elected precisely because people followed your advice and pursued what appeared to them the lesser of two evils.

Given the choice of soviet or chinese style "communism" it was the lesser... if we go by the government's body count on your own citizenry.

 

[T C]

Yeah, exactly.



There is no doubt where Chili would have gone. It would have been Cuba II in short order.

I really hope that a foreign power doesn't decide to support a coup in your country to stop 'communism' (or more accurately, in a South American context to stop the workers and peasants getting justice). I hope that a junta doesn't come to power that restricts your liberty and makes you live in fear. I really hope that none of your family or friends are arrested, tortured or 'disappear' for having the wrong political views.

I really hope none of these things happen to you, but perhaps if they did, it would teach you about the consequences of the policies you support(ed).

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I really hope that a foreign power doesn't decide to support a coup in your country to stop 'communism' (or more accurately, in a South American context to stop the workers and peasants getting justice). I hope that a junta doesn't come to power that restricts your liberty and makes you live in fear. I really hope that none of your family or friends are arrested, tortured or 'disappear' for having the wrong political views.

I really hope none of these things happen to you, but perhaps if they did, it would teach you about the consequences of the policies you support(ed).

The junta already came to power, and it can already do that stuff. Bhsup has no reason to fear them though, because they don't fear him. I don't fear them because despite my outspokenness I keep a very low physical profile.

 

[Narz]

Don't be so anti-something that you're pro bad things.

Typical modern milquetoast attitude where the worst thing a person can do is offend someone else with their beliefs.

The 21st century is gonna be no joke. Those who can't handle difficult decisions or situations where they'll be faced with a choice between evils should check off the planet while things are still rosy enough that this type of comment could be a mainstream view.

 

[Hygro]

Typical modern milquetoast attitude where the worst thing a person can do is offend someone else with their beliefs.

The 21st century is gonna be no joke. Those who can't handle difficult decisions or situations where they'll be faced with a choice between evils should check off the planet while things are still rosy enough that this type of comment could be a mainstream view.

Don't be so anti-democratic party that you're pro coal power. There's the story of the 21st century.

This has nothing to do with being me or anyone being offended by someone's beliefs, and everything to do with people affected power in the world with their actions because of their beliefs.

 

[bhsup]

Don't be so anti-coal that you can't look reasonably at clean coal.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Don't be so anti-coal that you can't look reasonably at clean coal.

I like clean coal. Unfortunately the only way to make it cost effective is to punish dirty coal burning. Since the coal lobby protects all coal equally they are against clean coal.

 

[Farm Boy]

There's the story of the 21st century.

I think there will be more to it by the time we're dead and gone. And I bet some of those pages will be dog eared by very old tales of good intentions and blood.

 

[Hygro]

Don't be so anti-coal that you can't look reasonably at clean coal.

Exactly!

I like clean coal. Unfortunately the only way to make it cost effective is to punish dirty coal burning. Since the coal lobby protects all coal equally they are against clean coal.

Funny how that works...

 

[Tahuti]

I like clean coal. Unfortunately the only way to make it cost effective is to punish dirty coal burning. Since the coal lobby protects all coal equally they are against clean coal.

The problem is that environmentalist lobbies have an irrational hostility towards anything related to coal, so they won't counteract the coal lobby either on that issue either; they want to eradicate coal altogether, yet this posture is what makes non-clean coal attractive in comparison to clean coal.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Typical modern milquetoast attitude where the worst thing a person can do is offend someone else with their beliefs.

The 21st century is gonna be no joke. Those who can't handle difficult decisions or situations where they'll be faced with a choice between evils should check off the planet while things are still rosy enough that this type of comment could be a mainstream view.

Don’t be so anti-milquetoast that you send off-planet the people who are disinclined to let issues devolve into grim, apocalyptic binaries.

Or your dire, millenarian doom may arrive the surer and the sooner.

I’m sorry. I just get really offended by attacks on the milquetoast. It’s like we’re the one class of people that it’s still fair game in our society to badmouth. We have feelings too, you know. It may not seem like we do because we’re so darn mild-mannered, but let me assert in the strongest terms I can muster—or the strongest terms that won’t be off-putting, at least, or, well, really emphatic terms—that, by golly, we do in fact have feelings.

 

[Narz]

But some things are binary, one has to take a stand, now more than ever!

All this is a bit off topic of course, but you sensitive types have a way of revolving all discussions around your personal feelings.

 

[jackelgull]

Some things are binary, most are not. The problem is that people assign binary labels to situations they don't understand, are too lazy to look for a better way out of.

In the case of South Africa, the situation looked pretty binary for the native Africans right? Just use their advantage in numbers to over run the white minority, or let themselves be oppressed and killed but thanks to Mandela, a better more humane way was found.

 

[LoneRebel]

Long term, this is not hypothetical.

The flaws Marx points out in capitalism are very much real. Letting capitalism run long enough does in fact make those flaws unbearably obvious. Since no one other than Marx has ever provided any solid analysis of anything else for capitalism to evolve into at that point there is no reason to expect it will be anything other than as Marx predicted. Anyone who does not see that evolution in progress in states with advanced stage capitalist economies, France and Germany among them, is just not looking.

Um, okay. I guess capitalism is going to go exactly the way Marx predicted, just because no one else has made any alternative predictions. That's a real good argument right there.

 

[jackelgull]

I would argue that Marx does not account for one thing- the decency of humanity. We have eight hour work days, and such a thing as the minimum wage. So MArx isn't exactly wrong, he's just too negative.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I would argue that Marx does not account for one thing- the decency of humanity. We have eight hour work days, and such a thing as the minimum wage. So MArx isn't exactly wrong, he's just too negative.

I don't see where Marx is 'negative'. Capitalism is an economic system. There has never been an economic system that didn't evolve into something. It is extremely unlikely that capitalism is 'the end'. I'm not so attached to it that I can't accept that progress is inevitable and probably for the best.

 

[T C]

I would argue that Marx does not account for one thing- the decency of humanity. We have eight hour work days, and such a thing as the minimum wage. So MArx isn't exactly wrong, he's just too negative.

8 hour work days and minumum wages did not happen because of 'the decency of humanity', they were won because of mass action by the workers, through unions and other organisations.

 

[T C]

The junta already came to power, and it can already do that stuff. Bhsup has no reason to fear them though, because they don't fear him. I don't fear them because despite my outspokenness I keep a very low physical profile.

You cannot compare what a US citizen (as opposed to a foreigner rotting in Guantanamo) has to suffer, with what the people living under US sponsored regimes in latin America had to suffer.

It's exactly because of this ignorance of what happened, that people like bshup can say they supported the US sponsored coups in latin America.

 

[bhsup]

I think I see where the confusion is coming from. You actually, ridiculously think the US was responsible for Allende's fall from power at the hands of Pinochet. Is that correct?