Originally Posted by Hutch74

You know..its amazing how many people argue just for the sake of arguing.

You owe me a new monitor, ROFLMAO!

James, as I said above, in order for appeasement (or peacemaking) to work, both sides have to be reasonable. Neither one must have war as its primary goal, or some goal so radical that war is inevitable. Appeasement is the lynchpin of diplomacy as long as you're not dealing with a Hitler. When you are, there's no way to have peace and you just have to resign yourself to the necessity of kicking his ass.

Your problems with Obama and those of the left both stem from the same source: he is trying to appease Hitler. He is trying to compromise with an opposition that has no interest in compromising. If the Republicans of today were those of the 1980s or, even better, the 1950s, compromising and getting a reasonable measure of progressive reform rather than the whole loaf would be what any reasonable progressive would expect -- it's the norm when you have a strong progressive leadership and the government as a whole is sane. Getting the whole loaf at one sitting is so rare it's not far off to call it nonexistent.

But today's GOP has gone off the deep end, James. These are not conservatives. Conservatives can be reasoned with. Conservatives are open to compromise. Conservatives have a vital function, from a progressive point of view, in the dialog: they are like the brakes on a car. They prevent the government from going insane in a leftward direction by requiring that progressive ideas prove themselves to a degree before being implemented. They impart a measure of necessary caution.

But that does not describe these intransigent, belligerent radicals that are posing as conservatives in Congress today. Attempting to make peace with them is like attempting to make peace with Hitler. They don't want peace. They want revolution. What you wanted Obama to achieve was inherently impossible given that fact, and what we wanted him to achieve required that he come out swinging instead of trying to compromise.

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Originally Posted by herbal tee

I didn't go to an Indonesian madrassa.

Neither did Obama. Please put that chestnut to rest. According to SNOPES, the school Obama went to (after two years of Catholic school) was an elite public school. Most students were Muslim and there was some religious instruction, but it was not a madrassa.

Originally Posted by James50

Anyone raised in the history of the prelude to WW2 uses the word appeaser in a negative sense, but appeaser is just another word for peacemaker. I have pointed out in other posts the stirring oratory of Obama the confrontational leader that appealed so much to the progressives. On the other hand, his appeal to centrists in 2008 was more based on his stated aim to end the culture wars and bring us together. In hindsight, perhaps this latter hope was the main reason I voted for him.

Negotiation takes two -- both operating in good faith with good to offer for good. Maybe two countries having budgetary difficulties might find an excuse to cease building up the military machines. Maybe both sides are tiring of vilifying each other. Maybe some country wants a graceful exit from a costly stalemate of a war without expecting someone else to take over. Menachem begin and Anwar Sadat may have had low expectations of each other... but both did what was in the national interest of their respective countries in the Camp David Accords. Mikhail Gorbachev may have seen Ronald Reagan as a nasty piece of work to begin with, but both recognized the desirability of reducing their nuclear arsenals while precluding client states from developing their own nukes. The Soviet interest in keeping a country like Poland from developing its own nukes corresponded with the American interest in keeping a country like Italy from developing its own nukes.

Neville Chamberlain got agreements from Adolf Hitler that a reasonable leader would have offered and accepted. To be sure, someone like Churchill might have driven a harder bargain... or gotten an abject failure with the blame associated with the failure. Churchill had no illusion about Hitler; Chamberlain assumed the best (a good practice in democratic politics, but not when dealing with a sociopathic leader).

Progressives think of his peacemaking with Republicans and feel betrayed, but he also has tried to be a peacemaker with his own party. One constant criticism of the first two years was that he turned legislating over to Pelosi and Reid.

Unless politics are to operate in a climate of complete distrust, one must assume that the opposite sides in a political debate have some common interests -- but when one has political leadership that so wants the other side to fail that it would engineer a depression to discredit the economic stewardship of the other side unless it concedes everything, one has no good faith. Things could have been worse, as in France in the late 1930s -- its Hard Right was willing to subject the country to military defeat so that it could impose a dictatorial and exploitative order with a reactionary culture.

Progressives fume at the cognitive and psychological disconnect between his "change" campaign rhetoric and his "peacemaker" governance. Centrists think of his peacemaking as simply not having worked. He passed a stimulus program which was little more than payoffs to favored groups and a health care overhaul that never had the consensus of the country. Much of the country still loathes both of them and the unemployment rate is like a corrosive on feelings of good will.

There is a learning process. We are finding out the hard way that payoffs to favored groups (the solution for both sides, once in 2009 and once in 2011) are not enough. It won't be enough to give unions everything that they want when most people are not going to join unions. (Illustration: anyone at Wal-Mart who uses certain words -- union, strike, organize, and meeting will be reprimanded even if those words are used in unrelated contexts, as in discussing a Civil War re-enactment, hitting ten bowling pins at once, making one's apartment less cluttered, or picking up Uncle Ed at the airport), and it won't be enough to offer special breaks to Big Business unless those breaks create jobs.

I still think he will be reelected simply because the Republicans are not able to offer a candidate that can win a majority, but his second term will probably be even more divisive and disappointing as his first. We are not in a good place.

James50

The Republicans have some lessons to learn, too, and people rarely learn those lessons when they are getting their way in elections.

Originally Posted by The Wonkette

Neither did Obama. Please put that chestnut to rest. According to SNOPES, the school Obama went to (after two years of Catholic school) was an elite public school. Most students were Muslim and there was some religious instruction, but it was not a madrassa.

Actually, a moslem education is not necessarily something that I would hold against someone. I know that if I had lived in europe between the years circa 900 ad to 1450 ad, that I'd rather have lived and learned in Moorish Spain than in any of the then more backward countries to the north.

My larger point is that although there are some superficial similarities between my background and the presidents' apparently the differences have given him an outlook on life that is completely alien, no pun intended, to my own.

Originally Posted by ziggyX65

Interesting take, and you may be on to something. Here's the thing -- I think this is a reasonable analogy, but at the same time, we're looking at it from an historical, sociological and generational theory point of view Chamberlain didn't have. I would agree that what is right in one turning may not be right in another. But Chamberlain didn't know these things. Indeed, many historians believe the Third Reich came into power with the help of no-compromise, make-them-suffer policies the WW1 "winners" imposed on Germany as terms of surrender -- that is, 4T "solutions" on a time that wasn't 4T. In other words, THAT may have been the time for a Chamberlain. But in this case, where 1918 and its aftermath is concerned, it was this uncompromising, crush-the-opposition mindset that helped fuel much of the Weimar Republic's economic woes -- the reparations they were made to pay wrecked their economy -- led Germany to desperation, and helped fuel to the rise of Hitler in 1933.

In other words, maybe the defeated Germany in 1918 wasn't as hell bent on starting another war as Hitler was in 1938 when Chamberlain helped "appease" the Nazis for a few months. But Chamberlain presumably didn't have any understanding of saecula or turnings or generational theory. He may not even have known about the cyclical nature of history and how it has tended to repeat every +/- 70-80 years. It seems like Monday morning quarterbacking now, but the point is well taken. Hopefully we can use this insight in the future if nothing else. This may be the time for "unconditional surrender" as may have been when Chamberlain brought non-4T thinking into a budding 4T situation. I'd make a particularly horrible politician today, because this is not my mindset.

I read something not to long ago that said Chamberlain knew he was ruining his career with appeasement of Hitler and wept when he came home, regardless of the statement of "Peace in our time." This POV said Chamberlain was well aware that England was in no position at that time to go to war-- did not have the economy, infrastructure, manufacturing or materiel to go into a fight with Hitler at that time. Don't know if it's accurate or revisionist, but it's interesting.

Originally Posted by Hutch74

Originally Posted by summer in the fall

Yes, but it was intended to evoke the fear and dread associated with Hitler. That is the only reason why anyone makes Hilter analogies. The only reason. Tea Partiers and other protesters throwing up Obama as Hitler signs citing one similarity between the two as rationale is prime example.

Just a thought. Only ignorant idiots manage to take what otherwise would be a legitimate comparison to one characteristic of Hitler into an OMG YOU'VE INVOKED HITLER type drama that raises everyones hackles.

I saw where Brian was coming from. That you didn't speaks to your inability to even debate on any kind of logical basis.

And people who have absolutely nothing to add to a discussion manage to reduce it to name-calling. Go back and look at my posts, Hutch, check to see if I've ever called anyone a name (and then of course look at your own). Then come back and talk to us simple folk about ignorant idiots. Best...

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

James, as I said above, in order for appeasement (or peacemaking) to work, both sides have to be reasonable. Neither one must have war as its primary goal, or some goal so radical that war is inevitable. Appeasement is the lynchpin of diplomacy as long as you're not dealing with a Hitler. When you are, there's no way to have peace and you just have to resign yourself to the necessity of kicking his ass.

Your problems with Obama and those of the left both stem from the same source: he is trying to appease Hitler. He is trying to compromise with an opposition that has no interest in compromising. If the Republicans of today were those of the 1980s or, even better, the 1950s, compromising and getting a reasonable measure of progressive reform rather than the whole loaf would be what any reasonable progressive would expect -- it's the norm when you have a strong progressive leadership and the government as a whole is sane. Getting the whole loaf at one sitting is so rare it's not far off to call it nonexistent.

But today's GOP has gone off the deep end, James. These are not conservatives. Conservatives can be reasoned with. Conservatives are open to compromise. Conservatives have a vital function, from a progressive point of view, in the dialog: they are like the brakes on a car. They prevent the government from going insane in a leftward direction by requiring that progressive ideas prove themselves to a degree before being implemented. They impart a measure of necessary caution.

But that does not describe these intransigent, belligerent radicals that are posing as conservatives in Congress today. Attempting to make peace with them is like attempting to make peace with Hitler. They don't want peace. They want revolution. What you wanted Obama to achieve was inherently impossible given that fact, and what we wanted him to achieve required that he come out swinging instead of trying to compromise.

You are talking yourself into something that does not exist. Neither the Republicans nor the Tea Party is as reactionary as you like to portray it. They have a point of view which they are pursuing like any political movement. Right now, they feel like they have the wind at their back and that the country is on their side. Why should they back off? But to say they are bent on some kind of authoritarian domination or theocracy is just exaggerated rhetoric. They want smaller government and lower taxes. They know it will take big changes to bring this about. Like you I worry about such a policy leading to corporate domination beyond what we have now. This concern is legitimate and I take comfort in their origins in a hatred of TARP. The great majority of the people you fear are ordinary citizens upset at the course of the country. This does not make them authoritarians. When you write like this, I feel like you are drifting into a world that will only lead to exactly what you fear.

James50

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Negotiation takes two -- both operating in good faith with good to offer for good.

I think the Republicans are acting in good faith as they see it, but they are also acting in a situation where they perceive they have the upper hand. I understand you feel threatened by this and want to impute all sort of evil and fascistic motives to the other side. When you go off about slaves and imprisonments, I can feel the fear in your prose. What you should be doing is working to convince others not accusing them of wanting something they do not want.

James50

Originally Posted by James50

I think the Republicans are acting in good faith as they see it,

James50

and

Originally Posted by herbal tee

I guess that one could take the postmodernist approach that as McConnell believes that he is right in the long run his short term sabotaging of the president is justified.

We are in uncharted territory.
This is literally not your grandparents 4T.

Originally Posted by James50

Neither the Republicans nor the Tea Party is as reactionary as you like to portray it.

A lot of evidence has been presented on this thread that yes, they are. They showed themselves willing to send the government into default as a form of extortion. They have abused the Senate's filibuster, intended to be used only to block legislation strongly unacceptable to a minority, to block anything and everything. They have advocated dismantling Medicare and actually voted in the House to do so. Bear in mind that at this point I'm talking about the current crop of Republicans in Congress, not anyone outside government.

They want smaller government and lower taxes? No. They want an authoritarian, indeed totalitarian government shorn of all its provisions and programs helping ordinary people or restricting the profits of big corporations, while expanding its war-fighting and police powers and intruding more and more into the private lives of Americans and always ready to violate the borders of foreign countries with armed force.

The people I fear are not "ordinary citizens upset at the course of the country," they are professional politicians serving in Congress, who are advocating exactly what I outlined above and voting to enact it insofar as they have the numbers, which at this point thankfully they don't. What they do have is the numbers to block any legislation, and they have used that in a completely irresponsible manner to extort concessions on other points they could never vote in directly while controlling only one house of Congress. These are not normal times. These are not normal Republican politicians. These are people who cannot be reasoned with, cannot be bargained with, will never compromise, and are willing to bring the nation to and past the brink of ruin if they don't get their way. They are not legislators so much as political terrorists.

I realize this is intemperate language, but I am not, alas, exaggerating in the slightest degree.

EDIT: You are, for my part, completely mistaken as to motives. I do not fear these people. I know they cannot, in the long run, succeed. I do find them frustrating, and I find the president's approach to them more frustrating still.

Originally Posted by herbal tee

and


We are in uncharted territory.
This is literally not your grandparents 4T.

What is uncharted? When the democrats had the whip hand in 2008, do you think they gave a hoot or listened to anything the Republicans did or said? The democrats felt they were elected to do certain things and they set about doing them. Now the republicans are doing the same thing. Its politics. My suggestion to the left (and to the right) is to quit talking about the other side as if they were little fascists. I am sick of it. The republicans want smaller government and lower taxes. In 2010, the electorate agreed with them. What do you expect them to do?

James50

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

I realize this is intemperate language, but I am not, alas, exaggerating in the slightest degree.

It is intemperate and you are exaggerating.

James50

Originally Posted by James50

When the democrats had the whip hand in 2008, do you think they gave a hoot or listened to anything the Republicans did or said?

Yes, they did. That's why we have a health-care plan with no public option.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Yes, they did. That's why we have a health-care plan with no public option.

It was the opposition within the democratic party that doomed the public option. They had the 60 votes until Scott Brown was elected.

James50

Originally Posted by summer in the fall

Cheers.

Jeez man, can I ask you to shorten it up a bit? I would like to hear your point of view, but this is too much. I much prefer the short, pithy remark to the diatribe. And when you rebut multiple posters and even start quoting yourself, my inclination is to just skip it.

Are you any relation to Glick?

James50

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

There is only one approach that will work with such people: fight them. Fight them hard. Fight them without compromise or compassion or half-measures. Accept no resolution short of unconditional surrender. Drive them utterly and forever out of high office. Yes, that means that the niceties of parliamentary procedure and normal democratic governance have to be set aside for a while. It's a Crisis Era. That's part of the package.

You are beginning to sound just like the people you despise.

"What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil? ... And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you – where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's, and if you cut them down -- and you're just the man to do it -- do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!"

Thomas More in "Man for All Seasons".

James50

Originally Posted by James50

It is intemperate and you are exaggerating.

I have made specific statements about what the Republicans in Congress have done. I have characterized these actions with that intemperate language. If you wish to refute this, you must either show that I am mistaken about what they have done, or explain why you think that what they have done does not indicate an unreasonable, radical attitude on their part. You may proceed at your discretion. However, merely making unsupported general statements such as the above accomplishes nothing.

As for "sounding like the people I despise," when one is being shot at, and one is armed, one shoots back. Not doing so may perhaps gain the moral high ground. It is also, however, more likely to result in one's demise.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

As for "sounding like the people I despise," when one is being shot at, and one is armed, one shoots back. Not doing so may perhaps gain the moral high ground. It is also, however, more likely to result in one's demise.

No one is shooting at anybody. You are attacking the rule of law. That is intemperate.

James50

Originally Posted by James50

It was the opposition within the democratic party that doomed the public option. They had the 60 votes until Scott Brown was elected.

I refer you to what happened in 1965 when Medicare was passed: http://progressivefix.com/yet-more-o...d-polarization

LBJ could count on Medicare passing in 1965 because the existence of liberal and moderate Republicans made the successful deployment of the filibuster unlikely. On the GOP side, conservatives would have had to court a sizeable number of right-leaning Democrats to make a filibuster threat credible. The difficulty of doing so (particularly with a southern Democrat as intimidating as LBJ applying countervailing pressure) gave Republican moderates little incentive to go along with such a threat. On the Democratic side, the opportunity for a single senator to engage in grandstanding or deal-making in exchange for his vote was limited by the same dynamics — the ability to get moderate GOP votes would have allowed the leadership to ignore such threats. Unless the issue was one as momentous and controversial as civil rights, southern Democrats and conservative Republicans would not collaborate across the aisle.

That is the difference between a responsible, moderate-conservative Republican Party, as it was in 1965, and a party of irresponsible, radical ideologues such as it is today. The fact that the Democrats had to get all 60 of their votes in the Senate, instead of relying on most of the Democrats and a few moderate Republicans to support the measure, is a result of that change in the nature of the GOP.

Originally Posted by James50

No one is shooting at anybody. You are attacking the rule of law. That is intemperate.

I am, of course, using "shooting" as a metaphor, and no, I am not attacking the rule of law. What I am attacking is the reliance on genteel compromise when the other party is unwilling to engage in it. They want a fight and are unwilling to make peace. Fine. Give them one, and stop pretending we are still dealing with the Republican Party of Lyndon Johnson's day.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

I have made specific statements about what the Republicans in Congress have done.

1. Most of them voted for TARP and it passed.
2. Most of them voted against the stimulus because they thought it was bad policy. They lost.
3. They voted to keep the Bush tax rates and lower the payroll tax on employees. Many democrats voted with them and the President signed it. Personally, I think this was bad policy, but lower taxes is what they stand for. There is no reason to expect them to do something else except in the case of a grand bargain.
3. After the Senate refused to follow the statutory budget process, in the republican eyes, the only tool they were left with was the debt ceiling. They had won the previous election vowing to cut spending. The democrats left them with only one tool. They used it. There is recklessness enough to go around on all sides.
4. I hate the filibuster as much as you do, but the democrats made liberal use of it during the Bush years. No one's hands are clean.

What is your other evidence of republican intransigence?

You have a one sided view of things. On the democratic side, they pushed through a major social program (ACA) without achieving societal consensus. They rammed it through even after the election of Scott Brown. This was intransigence. The President ignored the best chance in recent years to get our deficit under control with Simpson-Bowles. If he loses the next election it will be because of these strategic mistakes.

James50

Originally Posted by James50

What is uncharted? When the democrats had the whip hand in 2008, do you think they gave a hoot or listened to anything the Republicans did or said?

Part of the reason why Obama is in trouble now is because he bent over backward to try and appease the Republicans. Why were the Republicans allowed to have a permament filibuster on everything?
How is that exercising the whip hand?

Why did Obama rule out trying for a public option much less single payer in the healthcare bill.
How was that using the whip hand?

Obama doesn't understand that you need sticks as well as carrots when your in charge.
I don't even think that he knows which end of a bull whip to crack.

The republicans want smaller government and lower taxes. In 2010, the electorate agreed with them. What do you expect them to do?

James50

No they don't want a smaller government.
They want a government that serves only the well connected.
The war machine will continue to turn our youth into dead meat.
They will continue to fill our prisons both here and overseas with the disappeared.
This isn't about setting anyone free.
Except those already powerful enough to be effectively unaccountable.


Also, I don't think that the average citizen wanted the government shut down or a default over the debt limit.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

The electorate that voted for Dubya in 2000 and 2004 and for Republican majorities in 2002 and 2010 midterms hardly qualifies as 'perceptive'. It is far more likely. and to the benefit of Democrats, that the Constitutional and Libertarian Parties will siphon off Republican-leaning voters than Democratic-leaning voters.

Bush was just as much of an economic illiterate as Obama as evidenced by the fact that many, if not most, of the policies pursued by Obama have been continuations and expansions of those of his predecessor. This is very similar to how New Deal policies were continuations and expansions of Hoover's policies to deal with the Great Depression eighty years ago which Rexford Tugwell, a member of Roosevelt's Brain Trust, admitted was the case.

The mood at PSU is much different now than it was a few years ago and the Millies are none to thrilled about Obama these days, any more than they were with his predecessor. The fact that Ron Paul is doing much better this time than he did four year ago suggests that the Millies are now looking for solutions outside of the usual boundaries. The fact is that other Republican candidates are having to adopt parts Ron Paul's rhetoric, in spite of the mainstream media ignoring him, in order to attract voters and particularly younger voters. Any political organization that fails to attract young voters is ultimately dead as a political force and both the major party hierarchies are aware of this.

The usual solutions appear now not be working and so the Millies are now beginning to look at ideas not sanctioned by the media gatekeepers. This is exactly what I would expect to see in a fourth turning. I don't think that the usual rules of political analysis are going to apply from here on. If the Millies keep going on this way even after Ron Paul leaves the scene then it seems that we are looking a probable future.

The progressives do not seem to have anything similar occurring and as long as such a movement continues to be absent then I must conclude that the progressive ideology of the last century may have run its course. As strange as it may appear I have been looking for such a movement as a way to check on which outcomes are most probable.

What is amusing to me is how willing the Millies are to listen to the cynical old Xer in the room. Once I get them to actually start thinking and to ask questions they turn out to be surprisingly competent.