Is This Where We're Headed?
When I was much younger Rhodesia was called The Breadbasket of Africa. No one is denying that there were problems and racism in Rhodesia that should not have existed. Civil War and Rebellion resulted in changes in policy along with the name Zimbabwe, but Zimbabwe did pretty well for a while until Mugabe decided to redistribute the land to his cronies. Now Zimbabwe can't even feed itself, let alone be the breadbasket of Africa. Land that once produced a bounty of food now produces next to nothing. The political instability of the country does not help, but it is a symptom of the problem, not its cause.
Zava said he has seen villagers plucking undigested corn kernels from cow dung to wash and eat. A slaughtered goat is eaten down to everything but hooves, bones and teeth. Crickets, cicadas and beetles also can make a meal.
This is the inescapable consequence of socialism as is also demonstrated in North Korea, Cuba, and rapidly declining economy of Venezuela. Curiously China's economy started it's serious growth after Marx was officially abandoned. (China's current system is more properly Fascist ie state controlled capitalism, and Russia is heading in that direction as well). America is admittedly a long ways from being as bad off as Zimbabwe, but it didn't happen overnight in Zimbabwe and it is not beyond the realm of possibility.
Mugabe freed the people of Zimbabwe from white oppression only to starve them. Once he is finally removed from power there could be a slow but steady improvement, provided his destructive policies are abandoned. They needed to end the white oppression but they needed to do so in a way that didn't destroy the nations economy.
I have said before that capitalism is flawed and imperfect but so far it is the most tolerable of several bad choices. Like Democracy, Capitalism would be the dumbest idea in the world if all the other options weren't so much worse. There is no truly good option. We grown ups know that.
Update: I had originally included a cartoon but after reconsideration removed it because it was a little too vulgar.
Further Update: I have the audacity to question, not the character of the individual members of the left, but the long term consequences of their misguided beliefs and I become a hateful reactionary. I guess it's hateful to express doubt and have concerns that aren't in keeping with the program. Aren't these the same people who just a couple of years ago were saying that Dissent is the highest form of patriotism?
Furthermore, calling us extremists for merely expressing skepticism is totally uncalled for. They certainly didn't call for unity when Bush clearly won in 2004, with only 1% less of the vote than Mr. Obama got.
Has anyone on the right gone to this extreme? (Pardon the obscenities)
Not that I know of. If you equate expressing doubt with the uncontrolled hatred shown above then I need to question your judgment. If you agree with the sentiments of the above pictures then the hatred is on your side of the screen, not mine.
Zava said he has seen villagers plucking undigested corn kernels from cow dung to wash and eat. A slaughtered goat is eaten down to everything but hooves, bones and teeth. Crickets, cicadas and beetles also can make a meal.
This is the inescapable consequence of socialism as is also demonstrated in North Korea, Cuba, and rapidly declining economy of Venezuela. Curiously China's economy started it's serious growth after Marx was officially abandoned. (China's current system is more properly Fascist ie state controlled capitalism, and Russia is heading in that direction as well). America is admittedly a long ways from being as bad off as Zimbabwe, but it didn't happen overnight in Zimbabwe and it is not beyond the realm of possibility.
Mugabe freed the people of Zimbabwe from white oppression only to starve them. Once he is finally removed from power there could be a slow but steady improvement, provided his destructive policies are abandoned. They needed to end the white oppression but they needed to do so in a way that didn't destroy the nations economy.
I have said before that capitalism is flawed and imperfect but so far it is the most tolerable of several bad choices. Like Democracy, Capitalism would be the dumbest idea in the world if all the other options weren't so much worse. There is no truly good option. We grown ups know that.
Update: I had originally included a cartoon but after reconsideration removed it because it was a little too vulgar.
Further Update: I have the audacity to question, not the character of the individual members of the left, but the long term consequences of their misguided beliefs and I become a hateful reactionary. I guess it's hateful to express doubt and have concerns that aren't in keeping with the program. Aren't these the same people who just a couple of years ago were saying that Dissent is the highest form of patriotism?
Furthermore, calling us extremists for merely expressing skepticism is totally uncalled for. They certainly didn't call for unity when Bush clearly won in 2004, with only 1% less of the vote than Mr. Obama got.
Has anyone on the right gone to this extreme? (Pardon the obscenities)
Not that I know of. If you equate expressing doubt with the uncontrolled hatred shown above then I need to question your judgment. If you agree with the sentiments of the above pictures then the hatred is on your side of the screen, not mine.
posted by shoprat at 11:52 AM
19 Comments:
Are you insane?
Yeah, we're going to become North Korea. Does that pass for thought on the right wing?
As for Cuba? Yes, it's time for Fidel to shuffle off this mortal coil but they are in much better shape than other Caribbean nations. They have education and health care in place. They also have a solid biomedical industry. None of the other Caribbean or central American countries have had any luck establishing a non agricultural industrial base so you might want to rethink Cuba.
Meanwhile your comparison of Mugabe and Obama pretty much indicates that you aren't willing to join in any constructive dialog to get things moving again. Absolutely insane.
Ducky, yes, it's shocking how the hatred has come out in many right wing bloggers. I will not say conservative because they become dicidedly reactionary, and for all of their holier than thou talk want nothing to do with moving this country forward. They will drywash their hands and laugh with glee when the economic trainwreck happens and blame it on a man who hasn't even been seated in office.
All the while spewing garbage about what a great man W was.
We see the true color of these liars who claim to be patriotic Americans yet wage a verbal civil war that only further divides this country.
You all need to pray for the serenity to accept what you can not change. Namely, the fact that the Republicans and their tired policies were roundly rejected by the electorate.
Their answer? Get even MORE reactionary, polarize even further, play on people's fear and anger. They WANT Barack Obama to fail. They NEED him to fail.
Great-insightful take--
C-Cs
Sr- You have not even let the man take office. I didn't critisize W until he went into Iraq. I even thought that after 9/11 he showed great leadership, then blew it by attacking the wrong country.
This hatred and the lying lie that Democrats are Socialists is irrational. Speaking of Haters, the Associated Press says that Obama has generated more death threats than any President Elect in history. You and your friends feed that hatred. These pics of people represent the extreme, nut job radical left, not the main stream Democrats. How would you like to be compared to say, Fred Phelps or the Aryan Brotherhood, or even the KKK? They are all "Bible believing Christians", right? No, I don't think that W is a "terrorist pig" or a "lousy fuck" (lousy president, yes)and I don't hate him. I do hate how badly he has damaged our country, though. I have prayed for him. You should pray for Obama and not actively undermine him before he even gets in.
It was 2003 before I really took issue with where he was taking the nation, even though I didn't vote for him I gave him a chance before I turned against his policies. In 2004 I was disappointed, too. But I gave him another shot. Of course he screwed that up and that is why 2006 was "a thumpin'' for the GOP.
I guess I'm saying give him a chance before you cry in your non-alcoholic beer about the death of America.
Ethiopia used to export food. And then they went socialist in the 1970s, and in short order they were starving to death as a result.
@ducky: " Yes, it's time for Fidel to shuffle off this mortal coil but they are in much better shape than other Caribbean nations."
No, they are one of the worst. People flee Cuba to live in other places. They don't flee TO it.
@tim: "Namely, the fact that the Republicans and their tired policies were roundly rejected by the electorate."
Where was the landslide? No. the difference was just a few percentage points. It was mostly because McCain was a tired old man. If it had been the vigorous younger McCain of 2000 running, there's a strong chance he would have won.
There was no such rejection as you claim.
@tim: "You and your friends feed that hatred."
That is a rather false and outrageous claim. Nothing from "him and his friends" has anything to do with encouraging or supporting death threats in any way. Now it seems like you are making stuff up. The ridiculous idea that criticism = death threats...
@Tim: "Their answer? Get even MORE reactionary, polarize even further, play on people's fear and anger"
The GOP proposes sound forward-looking solutions, and is never "reactionary". They also ply up to people's intelligence by offering sensible solutions instead of Obama's "Spread the Wealth" idea which only appeals to people's worst greedy and lazy tendencies.
What gives you the idea that I am not praying for Obama. I pray that God gives him guidance and the wisdom to listen to it. I do not hate him at all, but I do hate socialism.
He could surprise me and govern from the center, and if he's smart he will, but if he follows his rhetoric that he laid out during the primaries and before he became a national figure then he will set on this path.
Depends on how pragmatic he is. I could be wrong, but I'm not optimistic.
Oh, on a lighter note, I can't stand the taste of beer.
Ducky,
Cuba used to supply most of the sugar to the US, now they can't supply their own.
The hospitals you saw in Mr. Moore's film aren't the one's for every day Cuban's, they are the one's for the Cuban elites who kowtow to the Castro Clan.
Their "biomedical industry" is actually a Chinese style intellectual property rip-off industry. They buy two generation old equipment from the countries that trade with them, reverse engineer it, and then sell it to the third world.
The "state of the art" IV pumping systems they are selling to central America are a design Abbott Labs quit building 15 years ago, except with cheaper materials.
Shoprat---
You must be drinking the wrong kind of beer.
As for Obama, he is a socialist. Redistibution of wealth and centralization of control with the government are the tenants of it. He's already told us he'll do the first. The second is pretty clear when you look at his health care proposals, and "reregulation" proposals for many businesses.
Some folks don't like hearing the word used, but it fits him like a glove.
Did anyone on the right stand outside the Dem convention throwing urine on attendees? Thery have no redeeming qualities.
calling us extremists for merely expressing skepticism is totally uncalled for. They certainly didn't call for unity when Bush clearly won in 2004, with only 1% less of the vote than Mr. Obama got.
The left will not willingly tolerate dissent and never has. So I say, "Cram it down their throats." Not as vilely as the left has behaved -- I'm too polite for that.
But we must turn the tables.
I got to see the left close-up during Gathering of Eagles a few years ago in Washington, D.C.
Oh, sure, Code Pink waved the American flag when they marched across Memorial Bridge. But afterwards they dumped those flags in the trash and overturned their porta potties (So much for respecting the environment; urine and feces ran in the street gutters and, no doubt, entered the Potomac River).
And before Code Pink and the other moonbats began their march across the bridge, they wore kaffiyehs and carried the flags of terrorist and Communist nations.
I, for one, do not hope that Obama fails in the leadership role. But where is he going to lead our nation? Further down the socialist road with the acclaim of the stupefied electorate?
After all the vile tactics the left has used to get Obama elected -- the graphics in this post speak for themselves -- I know detect that the left fears that the tables might get turned on them. I am amused.
Perhaps the left realizes on some level that they are vulnerable. After all, they swept a demagogue into office, and his followers will be susceptible to being led.
@Tim: "I even thought that after 9/11 he showed great leadership, then blew it by attacking the wrong country."
Bush, with approval of Congress and the Vice-President Elect and future Secretary of State, retaliated against the right countries. Both of them.
In a post-9/11 world it would be insane to let a major terrorist kingpin like Saddam Hussein continue to attack peacekeepers, maintain a large aggressive army, and attack other countries and promote and fund terrorism. All of which he did in violation of a cease-fire.
Those signs make me sad. Is that really the best they can do?
Those pictures say it all, Shoprat!
Pictures tell a thousand words...These tell it all...
and to me ...they do show the character of the hate-filled-victim minded perpetrators of the Dark Side...
Again-an excellent post..
C-CS
I'll borrow a line that Nanc used when answering Ducky, slightly paraphrased: We'll be as fair to Obama as the left was to Sarah Palin. Otay? :)
PS-just viewed and read the cartoon for the day-it cracked me up :-) LOL-LOL-LOL...
C-CS
In actuality though, I know we will be much fairer to Obama than the left has been to either President Bush (as your pictures prove, Shoprat) or Sarah Palin. We must be prepared when we disagree with "The One" though, that we will have to put up with hateful comments from the left. With them, nothing ever changes. "Fair" means agree with them on everything.
dmarks, is Cuba the only Caribbean country that is migrating to the U.S?
Do right wingers ever offer anything but shallow bromides?
No refugees from Haiti, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Guatemala, Salvador in your neighborhood?
You live in Alaska?
In a post-9/11 world it would be insane to let a major terrorist kingpin like Saddam Hussein continue to attack peacekeepers, maintain a large aggressive army
-----------------------
A large aggressive army?
He had no Air Force, no navy, no armor, no artillery, no missiles, nothing. What large aggressive army are you talking about?
Let me clue you in on the situation in the Middle East. Iran is THE going concern.
Up till now it was pretty much a matter of the Middle East despots keeping power and us making sure Israel had plenty of welfare checks and acted as our proxy arms dealer in the world.
We get to sell arms and we get cheap oil. It was good for the Likud stiffs, the cheap bottom feeding Arab dictators, the defense industry and the major oil companies.
Then Iran and Iraq got in each others face and we sent lots of weapons stuff to Iraq. We didn't much care if a few million died so long as the status quo wasn't disturbed and nobody upset the clientele.
Now we are trying to fix the whole mess. At no time were our "freedoms" (LMAO) threatened.
The crack Iraqi spec-ops were not going to night drop and drop anthrax in your Wheaties the way you and the rest of the right wing predicted.
Large aggressive army. Right wingers are a stitch.
I'm starting to hold out a little bit of hope for NObama. He does seem to be moving a little more to the right. At least he has managed to piss off some of the leftards out there. Ask the union bosses what they think of his economics picks so far. Do you still think he will pull us out of Iraq as fast as he said he would? I don't. Foreign policy picks are all ex-Clinton people---some change there huh? I'm beginning to think maybe, just maybe, he wishes he had lost the election. The only reason he might not wish that is his ego. He certainly does know now that he is in way over his head, though he'll never admit to that.
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