Potemkin wrote:No; what it actually means is that you're fighting the wrong war.
Elaborate if you wish. I think it has more to do with trying to fight within other constraints--e.g., unwillingness to engage North Vietnamese troops in Laos or Cambodia, but only in Vietnam; unwillingness to engage Taliban in Pakistan/Waziristan, but only in Afghanistan. This makes wars unwinnable, but nevertheless profitable to some military suppliers.
Potemkin wrote:Yeah, funny how it's the Marxist-Leninists who can see these things, isn't it? Reading Marx and Lenin is a form of mental hygiene; it vaccinates you against the virus of liberalism.
Yeah, I think they're good analysts; although, I think oversimplification of analysis led to oversimplification of remedy. I always found Eric Hobsbawm much more accessible, probably because his analysis gets into WWII and the Cold War and obviously Marx's lifespan prevented him from getting there. I've read The Age of Revolution: Europe 1789–1848, The Age of Capital: 1848–1875, The Age of Empire: 1875–1914, and The Age of Extremes. They were all very interesting and very detailed.
Istanbuller wrote:@blackjack21, there is a nice essay on roots of the left's assault on white people, published on National Review.
Yes, I've already read that one. It's an interesting piece. The New Culture Forum has a similar take in late 20th Century Britain.
noemon wrote:It's not a matter of who sees it, but who has the right to say it.
Indeed, and that's his contention against the neoliberals.
noemon wrote:The only reason Blackjack uses Zizek is because it is the only way for this message to go across without being accused of 'racism' on the way as it comes from a leftist minority and as such not someone that can be dismissed as 'racist'.
On the contrary, Zizek notes that he does get called racist, but not from minorities. Rather, it is white liberals who call him racist. I experience very much the same thing as I do not espouse slavery, segregation, separate legal systems for different races, etc. However, the very act of talking about positive differences is forbidden in white liberal circles, and it is white liberals who condemn talking about positive differences. Zizek even notes that a Nigerian friend of his laments the narrative that "we cannot even do evil things without it being a result of white colonialism." You can understand SpecialOlypian's humor in talking about the need for white genocide, but you cannot understand my humor triggering SpecialOlympian when police officers are in a desperately dangerous situation where they have to defend themselves with deadly force, and he freaks out beyond measure. Indeed, neither you nor he are the minorities--or Politics_Observer for that matter--but render unto yourselves some position of moral authority while condemning others of your same race as "racist". Zizek also points this out in the following video, where the white liberal (in this case a Jew) puts down the actual downtrodden person (also a Jew) for daring to claim such a status.
So this is not a one time explanation from him either. People are hip to the drill now.
Heisenberg wrote:To be clear, I said Limbaugh was more spiteful than bin Laden. I stand by that.
Well, killing a few thousand people in the World Trade Center, few to none of them who make US foreign policy in the Middle East, seems a lot more spiteful than anything Limbaugh ever did.
Heisenberg wrote:Bin Laden was, by all accounts, erudite, charismatic and charming, and at least had very clear reasons for his jihad against the USA.
Yes, but this could be said of Hitler, Stalin or Mao too--or many Western liberal political actors for that matter. It's one of the areas where I disagree with Zizek's critique of Trump, because like so many others, he judges Trump on style rather than substance--and style appears to be very important to him as well.
Heisenberg wrote:Limbaugh was literally none of those things; just an angry, stupid, hypertensive pill popper who hated women and minorities for its own sake. Basically a discount bin Laden, without any of the personal courage.
Limbaugh's producer was black, and he was married many times. Like Trump, Limbaugh wanted women in his life. His pain medication addiction started as a result of what has killed so many Americans--the excessive prescription of Oxycontin for back pain after they had marketed the drug as non-addictive. Disagree with him on substance, but these sort of gutter snipe attacks don't shed any light on today's culture.
In some of Zizek's other critiques of the West, he talks about feminism and the breakdown of the patriarchy and a lot of Western men being nothing more than bull shitters while lamenting Margaret Thatcher. What I think Zizek is missing from that analysis is that in a post-industrial society (or market segment seems more to be the case), is that returns to violence are declining while returns to intellectual disciplines are increasing. So women take much more of a leading role in a society where a living doesn't require brute physical strength or physical danger nor the need to protect our child-bearing, child-rearing citizenry from non-domestic work. This is why much of my critique of the West follows Charles Murrays work--that the post-industrial information society makes beggars out of those who do not possess the intellectual sophistication for computer programming, law, medicine, etc.
Heisenberg wrote:Of course he didn't personally do more damage than Al Qaeda, because he was too much of a chickenshit loser to get up of his fat arse and do the work. But I hardly see how being too ravaged by vicodin and hamburgers to be capable of actual physical work is a point in his favour.
So you think Limbaugh would have been Al Qaeda or worse if it hadn't been for some personal vices and being a bit too self-indulgent? This sounds more like white liberals reserving more contempt for other whites who don't join their political crusade than for people who actually cut people's heads off, actively and proudly oppress women, throw homosexuals off the tops of buildings, burn their jailed enemies to death and so forth.
"We have put together the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics."
-- Joe Biden