North Carolina yesterday became the 30th state to ban same-sex marriage. Early results showed the amendment to its Constitution passing overwhelmingly by as much as 61 percent. The popularity of the amendment and key position of North Carolina in the upcoming presidential election appears to have prompted the White House to cancel an event in the state. President Obama cancelled a scheduled trip to North Carolina on the day of the vote. While Obama opposed the amendment last year, this week the White House was ridiculed by the media over the President’s refusal to support gay marriage and his insistence that his views were still “evolving” on the subject. The cancellation was widely viewed as an effort to avoid renewed questions over Obama’s refusal to take a clear stand on the civil rights question.
There was a huge turnout on Tuesday in North Carolina — attributed to the draw of the referendum. The proposed amendment states that “marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this state.”
North Carolina is viewed as a key target with Virginia for both campaigns. The vote reflects the division in the state with more liberal urban areas opposing the amendment while more conservative rural areas supporting it.
Just for the record, I have long advocated that the solution to this debate is to get rid of “marriage” licenses in favor of a universal civil union standard — which is closer to the function of the state recording of such unions. I believe that marriage should be left to individual faiths and institutions as a religious-based concept. The role of the state is to record a civil commitment of two individuals to live as one couple. The current debate — including the demand for retroactive termination of marriages — shows how the term marriage continues to inject religiosity into what is a civil contract between citizens.
Notably, the last time North Carolina amended its Constitution on marriage was in 1875 when it banned interracial marriage. That ban only ended in 1971.
Source: CNN
Mike: I already established above that an “unequivocal declaration” by Turley is not necessary for proof but rather deductive logic and common sense make crystal clear that no world famous Constitutional lawyer would ever write a series of articles documenting how Obama has done more to undermine the Constitution than anybody in the nation’s history — reducing it to a scrap of paper really insofar as he’s decreed himself judge, jury & executioner of every soul on the planet — and then have the audacity & hypocritical self loathing to turn around and vote for him — for if you love the Constitution you cannot possibly abet it’s grave digger.
These principles are implicit in his articles and your inability to connect the dots cannot alter the stubborness of the facts.
Res ipsa loquitur
Mike Spindell:
“I believe that my logical analysis and empirical historic data proves the illusory nature of a “free market” and even the terms coiner Adam Smith, believed it needed regulation to prevent its harming the public good.”
If you would actually read Adam Smith and not Noam Chomsky’s opinion of the Wealth of Nations, you would see that Adam Smith’s regulations were meant to improve the market not hamper it. Regulations Smith proposed were, for example, such that neither employers nor workers could conspire to set wage prices.
If he did not want employers or wage earners to set wage rates, that leaves that pesky “invisible hand”.
I disagree Bron, nothing that I seen you write shows me that the free market is not best at solving free market problems. I’ve seen government try for two generations, and the problems today are the same but even more exascerbated. If government is your solution, OMG were screwed. Lets’ not solve the problems, lets continue on the same path of thinking that govenerment is going to come to the rescue and make them even worse. Sounds pretty logical to me.
“If you would actually read Adam Smith and not Noam Chomsky’s opinion of the Wealth of Nations, you would see that Adam Smith’s regulations were meant to improve the market not hamper it.”
Bron,
I don’t like or read Chomsky. As for getting something through ones head when will you understand that regulations are meant to improve the market, not hamper it. Those against regulations are people like……Jaime Dimon.
“I’m of course for the right for any adult couple to marry I just cannot fathom why so many young people today would want to get the State entangled in their personal affairs?”
Karl,
How kind of you to finally get on target with this thread.
I’m of course for the right for any adult couple to marry I just cannot fathom why so many young people today would want to get the State entangled in their personal affairs?
“divert attention away from the fact that Turley won’t, out of principle, be voting for the guy you will for President and therefore his politics are actually closer to mine as I’ll be following his example.”
Karl,
Please show me where JT has stated he unequivocally won’t vote for Obama. Secondly, please explain to me how he is close to being a Marxist politically as you are? Thirdly, please tell me why you simply won’t admit your political orientation? I doubt you’re ashamed of it, so the only answer is you try to conceal it for political reasons.
“your old trade union bureaucrat instincts of red baiting coming to the fore”
Having watched Marxists take control of my Union, only to “constitutionally reform” away the Union’s highly democratic nature, I do take issue with them.
On nights where there were meetings of our Union’s Delegate Assembly, they had a 300 pound thug rip the microphone away from anyone expressing a contrary view. It helped me realize that what your type of “reformer” spouts is merely bullshit to suck people into your cult.
Finally, re: red baiting, I would defend unconditionally your right to hold your views and spread them, as I would that of a NAZI. Defending your rights, or a NAZI’s, rights doesn’t mean that you are immune from my criticism of your silly beliefs, or that I am “red baiting” when I do so. You throw that out because you are politically unable to take responsibility for your point of view.
Another word for that would be disingenuous. As for Havel and the AK-47’s, you are aware that the arms industry has been a main industry of that country for at least a century? I would also say that part of the reason you dislike Havel so much is that he hated Marxists, which is reasonable give how the USSR treated his people. Now since you want to make an issue of me liking Havel, would it be fair for you to explain your feelings for Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot?
I’m only worried about the budgets for the state court proceedings once the same-sex custody battles start. Perhaps it will be a good thing. Perhaps after that, the ONLY thing a court will have time to do in custody battles will be to toss a coin, and then perhaps they’ll come out 50% right, which would be a great improvement on what’s going on right now.
Has anyone ever seen a study of the potential effects to the federal budget with or without same sex marriage? many issues — income tax brackets, social security benefits, federal pension benefits, inheritance taxes etc.
Mike, you’ve got it backwards again (just like when you portrayed Havel as this saint of peace when really he was one of the world’s biggest exporter of AK47’s) as what we’ve really heard too much of over the years is reformists like you advocating “lesser evilism” politics which only perpetuates evil.
As far as bringing up old dead Marxists that’s just your old trade union bureaucrat instincts of red baiting coming to the fore as those people have never been the issue of this thread rather they’re the red herring straw man you keep regurgitating in order to divert attention away from the fact that Turley won’t, out of principle, be voting for the guy you will for President and therefore his politics are actually closer to mine as I’ll be following his example.
Gene H, one of your sentences intrigued me: “However, my reasons are quite personal and specifically related to my training.”
A friend of mine says, “Malisha you always have some PERSONAL story that leads you to PUBLIC action.” Well, that’s true, I admit that. I can read about something and say it’s good, it’s bad, I doesn’t seem right, it should be this way or that way. But I generally make my decisions about individual politicians (and candidates, government people, authorities, etc.) based on personal histories and “stories” that meant something to me at the time. I had a personal story with Governor Cuomo of NY (the one who decided not to try to run for Pres). Although I could not support his opponent in the next election (and it didn’t matter because I was not then a New Yorker), I opposed HIM.
For the very same kinds of reasons I opposed Joe Lieberman, Joseph Biden, and some guy from Wisconsin whose name I have forgotten. It has also caused me to SUPPORT people specifically because of a personal experience I had of them. At one point I testified before the Judiciary Committee of the Maryland House of Delegates. I made eye contact with Anthony G. Brown (now Deputy Gov but back then, state legislator) and realized he understood what I was saying about the case “In re Gault” [children’s constitutional rights]; he was nodding. From that point forward I trusted him. This goes as high as a vice presidential candidate and as low as the Clerk of Court in the County where I live. They can be from the party I generally support or they can be anybody; once I have a real experience with them and put them “on the list” for something I consider utterly unacceptable, I cannot give them any political support; it feels like I am taking poison! And once I trust them, even if it was because of something as simple and equivocal as a head nod, I’m for them. What can I say?
The question is who then must do the reforming and how.
If you want change, your choices are:
1) Reform
2) Revolution
That’s not a false dichotomy. Those really are your only two choice. One transaction usually has a significantly higher cost as illustrated by history.
Asking those in power to create reform of themselves is like trying to get a fox to stop raiding the chicken coup. A revolution is only a short term fix as our nation experienced; a short time being relative in the course of human history and as you noted a much more violent and tumultuous transfomation. I believe that is a couple of other potentials.
HSKI has raised a valuable point. Reformism at this stage is impossible because ever since the Spanish-American war US capitalism became tied to a predatory foreign policy, that is imperialist, and no civilization has ever been able to vote away imperialism.
Nor was it suggested anywhere by me that violence is required but rather a revolution IS required.
There is such a thing as the working class and they are the vast democratic majority of this nation. The key is organizing them around a party that fights for their class interests as vigorously as the bosses, bankers & landlords fight for their interests with their one party system that has 2 factions bickering over the best way to transfer wealth from the 99% to the 1%.
KF, right on. People are so entrenched in the system that it is extremely dufficult for them to change their minds, especially those that have the necessary experience, knowledge and wisdom to assist in a transfomation. The 3% have to provide the 97 percent with better alternative and the free marketers have just not done that in my opinion. Obviously going cold turkey is impossible, so it much be a gradual change. But what to? I suggest that we have been erroneously looking for government to be the entity that creates the change. I have now given up on that possiblity, having been under this miscomception for way to long and wasting decades of time, energy and thought. I’ve even ran for public office with a primary campaign goal of a voucher system. A partial success, but in my opinion to small to be even counted.
I also believe that justice is the key and until real justice is somehow gained for the majority, no real transformation of the human experience will occur. Half of the majority can ‘t even afford our justice system so we have a real diliema on our hands. I think that there are a number of things we could try.
“There is such a thing as the working class and they are the vast democratic majority of this nation. The key is organizing them around a party that fights for their class interests as vigorously as the bosses, bankers & landlords fight for their interests with their one party system that has 2 factions bickering over the best way to transfer wealth from the 99% to the 1%.”
Karl, Karl, Karl,
You don’t know how many times I’ve heard this same rant over the years. There is nothing wrong with the spirit of it except for the fact that you people are incapable of organizing around anything, or by starting a mass movement to get it done. That is exactly why you and your cohorts believe the path is towards making things as intolerable as possible for the 99%, with the false premise that once that range of despair is reached, the people will accept your message and revolt. How did that work out for both Russia, Cambodia and China?
The flaw is that while you rant about the mass murder of people, you lack any real compassion for the suffering reaching the lowest ebb will have on people here. If that end is achieved, then the revolution will either be by fascist tea baggers, or by Marxist ideologues like yourself who will oppress the very “people” they are fighting for, in the pretense that they’ll need political re-education from their bourgeois beliefs, before they can have the “democracy” you’ve held out as a carrot. Unfortunately, that will ever happen as your revolutionary leaders will deem themselves irreplaceable because of their “deeper” understanding of doctrine. Now refute me by explaining that Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were not Marxists and I’ll just laugh at your blind rigidity.
Mike, as I have shown in various writings democracy is an illusion that implies that the majority opinion is correct and that people will vote for what is in the majorites best interest, instead of their own. That by doing so, things will just magicly provide a good outcome for the plurality. It like thinking it will all average out, and that is the best potential outcome that we can rely on. We have seen what that has gotten us in the 20th century. Relying on a politcal cure, I now see as a waste of time from both a logical analysis and imperical historic data. I think it is going to require the free market to solve free market problems, since you can not obviously rely on government to provide it.
“Mike, as I have shown in various writings democracy is an illusion”
hskiprob,
You have asserted it, but certainly haven’t proved it.
“Relying on a politcal cure, I now see as a waste of time from both a logical analysis and imperical historic data. I think it is going to require the free market to solve free market problems, since you can not obviously rely on government to provide it.”
Speaking of “illusions” I believe that you cannot prove by example that a “free market” is anything more than an illusion and wishful thinking, much less a solution to anything. I believe that my logical analysis and empirical historic data proves the illusory nature of a “free market” and even the terms coiner Adam Smith, believed it needed regulation to prevent its harming the public good.
Hey Mike, A couple of relatively short essays, The Democratic Capital Illusion at: https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en&fromgroups#!topic/HarrietRobbins/mURGvK3knbQ and one by John Hahnas, The Myth of the Rule of Law: http://rsjexperiment.wordpress.com/2011/12/29/the-myth-of-the-rule-of-law/. It’s a difficult realization but some relief as it gives you some of the issues why democracy hasn’t worked. I can’t say that it cannot work, it just hasn’t yet and thinking that you or I and our secret admirers can make it work is……..
Here is what Thomas Naylor, Professor Emeritus of Economics at Duke University” stated in a recent interview. There is no longer any moral justification whatsoever for the existence of the United States. The only morally defensible alternative to empire is peaceful dissolution.”
Gene H. I stand corrected & aplogize for my erroneous assumption. I’m glad to hear that I won’t need to waste my time excoriating you as an Obama supporter however I’m hardwired to feel a duty to educate, and if necessary excoriate, any sentient eligible voter from helping re-elect a mass murdering war criminal and eager architect of this increasingly monolithic Surveillance State.
KF,
“Gene H. You’re part of the problem too insofar as you’re guilty of aiding & abetting truly odious forces in the false & pompous name of “lesser evilism.””
Really. I guess you missed the part many months ago and the numerous times since then that I’ve stated I absolutely will not be voting for Barrack Obama this fall. However, my reasons are quite personal and specifically related to my training. I do not expect others to apply the standards to political action like voting that I do unless they are in a similar situation as myself. Aiding and abetting? Hardly. I’ve explained my position to many of those here taking the “lesser of two evils” approach. They by in large understood the logic of the arguments. Some agreed, some didn’t, but none failed to respect both my choice and my logic in reaching it. However, unlike you, I don’t feel the need to excoriate them if they choose differently from me when they come from different situations and different backgrounds. Actions have consequences and the ethics by which actors come to their decision is not mine to dictate as you apparently think it is yours to dictate. Just because I cannot in good conscience vote for Obama does not mean that others cannot vote for him with both good intentions and a clear conscience. If their decision proves to be a bad one (and make no mistake, both choices are bad in this election), then the consequences of their choices will be theirs to live with at the end of the day. If they are truly people of good conscience, they will punish themselves if they are making a misstep. That many of them are doing so with clear misgivings isn’t a failure in ethics on their part so much as it is a reflection of being put in the unfortunate position of dealing with a Morton’s Fork problem by a system that pretty much all are in agreement on it being broken to the point that “lesser evils” are the only choice.
Even the choice to abstain is a lesser evil whether you realize it or not.
Nobody is telling you that you have to vote for Obama.
That you are too arrogant? judgmental? presumptive in your ability to dictate their exercise of their Constitutional voting rights? dense? to reciprocate that courtesy is your failing.
Make your case, but when the curtain closes, the decision is still theirs.
I too have 2 dogs (alas my 3rd, a 14 year old Rhodesian Ridgeback named Ilych, just passed a month ago) and respect your disagreement, albeit a fairly minor one in my view, but just ask yourself this question: If smart guys like Turley, Greenwald & myself wouldn’t vote for Obama this November — why should a smart guy like yourself do any different?
I mean why, in the face of all the evidence of what a despicable scoundrel we are dealing with, a betrayer of of all the working people who believed his hype in ’08, give a vote of confidence to this guy and his party historically rooted in the slaveocracy that perpetuates this current plutocracy, who has committed war crimes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan & Yemen (thereby ensuring vengeance against us in the future) who continues to prosecute a war with an incomprehensible mission that drains unfathomable amounts of blood & treasure amidst the second Great Depression, a guy who abridges habeas corpus and the main principles of our Constitution by decree, who protects swindlers on Wall Street & Fraudsters running big banks, who rewards the incompetence of firms supposedly too-big-to-fail and calls it free market capitalism, a guy whose more vigorously prosecuted more Whistle Blowers than anybody in history rather than protect them, a guy whose let BP off the hook for ruining the Gulf Coast with a penalty of only perhaps 2 quarters worth of profits at most, a guy who some imagined had an opportunity to really change the system rather than reinforce it?
Why would anybody want to re-elect somebody whose proven to be the Betrayer In Chief?
BFM:
Why’s it so wrong to copy Turley & I this November – abstention out of the principle that neither candidate deserves a vote of confidence.
Voting the lesser of 2 evils is still a vote for evil.
Suppose for the sake of argument the choice was voting between Hitler & Stalin?
Both were mass murderers, but so were JFK (Operation Ranch Hand), Johnson (Vietnam), Nixon (Vietnam), Reagan (Libya & Central America), Bush 1 (Panama & Iraq), Clinton (Iraq, Somalia, Sudan & Serbia), Bush 2 (Iraq & Afghanistan) & now Obama in Iraq, Afghanistan & Yemen.
Bombing civilians IS still considered mass murder by the Geneva Convention you know.
What do Hitler, Stalin & Obama have in common? Mass murder; torture; a blatant disregard for international & domestic law; a lust for decreeing that they are the supreme judge, jury & executioner over you & your family; a psychopathic penchant for building up the Security State Apparatus; and last but not least, they deny the inviolability of the Great Writ of Habeas Corpus.
Clearly the solution is to work toward organizing a political alternative, a 2nd party if you will that deserves a vote of confidence by progressives, since this is clearly a One Party State with 2 factions bickering over the best way to enrich the 1% at the expense of the 99%.
As Glenn Greenwald concluded sarcastically in a recent article documenting yet another of Obama’s crimes: the most vigorous prosecution of WhistleBlowers in American history:
“…this unprecedented attack on whistleblowers, as obviously significant as it is, also enjoys full bipartisan support (as well as the indifference of a supremely passive media), and so it, too, will be completely ignored by the grand Election-Year clash of America’s two great and oh-so-fundamentally-different political parties.”
http://www.salon.com/2012/05/07/the_american_character/singleton/
@Karl Friedrich
Some quick responses, I don’t think there is anything wrong with working toward an alternative party, nor in following your own conscious in voting or not voting.
I distinguish voting for a Stalin or Hitler from our choices today on the basis of whether we can have influence on policies. As I mentioned, I don’t care who the alliance is with (at least with a very broad range). I care about the possibility of making changes in their policies.
To my mind the candidates differ in their amenability to influence. Considering the potential for damage posed by candidates, I consider it irresponsible not to attempt to influence candidates to better policies when that possibility presents itself.
Perhaps you believe you have a better chance to bring about change by sitting out the election. I disagree.
And I see no contradiction in working to bring into existence a different political party and at the same time working to elect not just the lesser of two evils but the candidate that you might influence the most.
BTW when it comes to national security, which more and more is in fact internal security, Obama is largely Bush II or maybe Bush on steroids.
You seem to think it is only OK to work with high minded politicos of good character, or at least the ones who are not felons. To me the issue is where are the levers of influence and can we get to them to make things different.
That’s is the quick and dirty for now. I have two humans and two dogs that are getting snarly because dinner is late.
Well said bigfatmike, however in my opinion, I would like to suggest to you that the current state of affairs of our great society, can not be repaired via any currect political means. The Judicary has now (actually 2007) blocked any formal redress of grievence, negating potential reforms. I believe the flaws are much deeper and more ingrained and the mere replacement of individuals at the top or even througout the system will change really nothing in the long run. I stand by this even if Ron Paul were to be elected. The two party system is to entrenched to be replaced and some of these people are near sociopaths in their ferver. Expecting the politicos as KF believes to solve the problems, is like thinking the Aristocracy should have been willing to turn over greater rights and priviledge to the proletariat.
I don’t suggest violence either as it has only given us temporary relief. Of course I’m looking in terms terms of true cultural change, so a couple of hundred years although it doesn’t relate to individuals, only generations, is the goal.
As an example, repealing the Charter of the Federal Reserve Bank would be a great win but what do you really believe those changes are?
Is there a repair? I think, but we have had a tough time to get the sociopaths and the apathetic to change. I have even been trying to present a well thought through idea and yet, the idea is so admittedly foreign, that even like minded people such as libertarians are finding it difficult to get involved. Perhaps It’s not a good idea? Or perhaps it’s an idea before it’s time. People continue to follow the same path, dispite its failure for decades and perhaps millienias. I suggest that the ingrained institutional evils are just as great today as they were under the Monarchs, with the difference as Gene H. like to point out, as only the acceptible social norms have changed a bit, but only a bit. Our govenrment still places little value on those who become colateral damage.
Gene H. You’re part of the problem too insofar as you’re guilty of aiding & abetting truly odious forces in the false & pompous name of “lesser evilism.”
Why? Because unlike Turley this election you admitted you’re voting for, meaning, aiding & abetting, a mass murderer who goes out of his way to protect some of the biggest criminals still running free in our lifetimes.
I think you have made some important observations in the past. But isn’t that a little strong.
Even if in some sense true, doesn’t being effective necessarily mean working within the realm of what is possible. I would sign up with the Devil himself right now if I though that would get things going in the right direction.
But exactly what alternatives do you see besides
(1) voting for some one that we believe might be influenced to move in acceptable directions
(2) throwing the vote away on no win candidates like Nader for the greens or whoever is representing the perennial never, never land communists.
What else do you suggest, armed insurrection? Sorry, as long as we have the vote I think I will stick to making cruel remarks, arguing with my neighbors and once every two or four years taking a stand with a few million other frustrated and sometimes outraged citizens.
In the final analysis, democracy is not a position. It is a process. Some times it works with in a reasonable range. Sometimes it runs out of range and produces really bad results. As long as the essential parts of the process are in place I think most of us would prefer to use the democratic, political process.
When they cancel the vote and turn the courts into three officer military tribunals let me know. Until then I would appreciate it if you would pass this along – it is really important to register and then vote.
“How droll that you accuse me of following political pundits, by slavishly quoting one.”
Droll and ironic, I might add.
Isn’t it telling how Curious & Spindell, by questioning my politics and quibbling over the small things avoid the real discussion about the routineness of American mass murder which has historically been perpetrated overwhelmingly by democratic presidents?
As Glenn Greenwald pointed out last week in in Salon when Obama was responsible for the murder of 5 Afghan kids & their mother: “To the extent these type of incidents are discussed at all — and in American establishment media venues, they are most typically ignored — there are certain unbending rules that must be observed in order to retain Seriousness credentials. No matter how many times the U.S. kills innocent people in the world, it never reflects on our national character or that of our leaders. Indeed, none of these incidents convey any meaning at all. They are mere accidents, quasi-acts of nature which contain no moral information (in fact, the NYT article on these civilian deaths, out of nowhere, weirdly mentioned that “in northern Afghanistan, 23 members of a wedding celebration drowned in severe flash flooding” — as though that’s comparable to the U.S.’s dropping bombs on innocent people). We’ve all been trained, like good little soldiers, that the phrase “collateral damage” cleanses and justifies this and washes it all way: yes, it’s quite terrible, but innocent people die in wars; that’s just how it is. It’s all grounded in America’s central religious belief that the country has the right to commit violence anywhere in the world, at any time, for any cause.”
“At some point — and more than a decade would certainly qualify — the act of continuously killing innocent people, countless children, in the Muslim world most certainly does reflect upon, and even alters, the moral character of a country, especially its leaders. You can’t just spend year after year piling up the corpses of children and credibly insist that it has no bearing on who you are. That’s particularly true when, as is the case in Afghanistan, the cause of the war is so vague as to be virtually unknowable. It’s woefully inadequate to reflexively dismiss every one of these incidents as the regrettable but meaningless by-product of our national prerogative. But to maintain mainstream credibility, that is exactly how one must speak of our national actions even in these most egregious cases. To suggest any moral culpability, or to argue that continuously killing children in a country we’re occupying is morally indefensible, is a self-marginalizing act, whereby one reveals oneself to be a shrill and unSerious critic, probably even a pacifist. Serious commentators, by definition, recognize and accept that this is merely the inevitable outcome of America’s supreme imperial right, note (at most) some passing regret, and then move on.”
It appears that both Curious & Spindell qualify as one those “Serious Commentors” that Greenwald just described.
http://www.salon.com/2012/05/08/us_attack_kills_5_afghan_kids/singleton/
Of course it follows just like the liberal media pundits they follow they’ll all be casting a vote for another Democrat mass murderer this November under the time worn delusion that he’s somehow a “lesser” mass murderer because he supports gay marriage, Roe vs. Wade, collective bargaining (in name only) along with… bank bailouts, protection of financial swindlers, perpetual war, torture, renditions, the elimination of habeas corpus & the strengthening of the Surveillance State.
What a repugnant M.O.: Ask a question then dodge the answer, pick at straw men, avoid the facts at hand and live in shame without even knowing it.
“Isn’t it telling how Curious & Spindell, by questioning my politics and quibbling over the small things avoid the real discussion about the routineness of American mass murder which has historically been perpetrated overwhelmingly by democratic presidents?”
Karl,
Questioning your politics is specifically because of the positions you take. To me it is peculiar that your anger is directed specifically at “historically been perpetrated overwhelmingly by democratic presidents”. Why would someone adopting purportedly left wing positions such as yourself, only be criticizing “democratic presidents”? I’ve explained the reasons why above and that is directly because of your Marxist slant. This is especially true since G.W. Bush committed mass murder in Iraq and last I heard he was a Republican.
Viet Nam was bi-partisan but it was left to Nixon to further escalate the murderous bombing of Cambodia and the North, while increasing the use of
napalm and chemical warfare. However, from your particular political niche you need to attack those you stupidly perceive as your competitors on the left wing. I say stupidly because you actually believe your rigid analysis has dialectical value, rather than the fact that it actually blinds you.
“Of course it follows just like the liberal media pundits they follow they’ll all be casting a vote for another Democrat mass murderer this November under the time worn delusion that he’s somehow a “lesser” mass murderer”
How droll that you accuse me of following political pundits, by slavishly quoting one. Sift through everything I’ve written here through the years and you will discover that I never cite pundits opinions on anything. I may agree with them, but I never use others opinions in forming my own. Nor do I use any pundits opinion as if their opinions were facts. This would be hard for you to understand since your whole world view was formed by the opinions of Karl Marx, political pundit.
How well I remember the same thought construction that you use now,back then praising the work of Chairman Mao, who murdered millions. My father related to me stories of dealing with those CP people who were enraptured by Stalin, who murdered 20 million, in the cause of Marxism. You of course would denounce them today for following incorrect notions, but back then you would have been slavishly adoring them.
The truth is that you’re a tea bagger mentally in leftist clothing, or even perhaps you’re a tea bagger in fact playing at being a Marxist as disinformation. In any event, what comes through as you talk of real tragedy that has wrongly been unleashed upon people by American militarism, is that there is little empathy for the lives lost, except as pawns in your vapid political game. What I most disliked in most of the Marxists I knew was their humorless
demeanor and lack of real empathy. They were great at crying crocodile tears and in the profession I was in, they were the worst social workers.