Teabaggers getting nastier.

[Darth Paxis]

snip

Perhaps you are right. I will try to proceed in the manner you have suggested. I responded to his last post:

What about the Blue Dogs, you kind of skipped over that in your response. And while I'm here, some more points to chew on. As to media mudslinging, pretty sure theres a difference between, Congressmen recieve death threats, and Obama murders cow. And from what I've seen, the Republicans in Congress are basically saying, "hey pansies suck it up", ... See Moreinstead of "death threats are NOT ok, and people should be ashamed for resorting to that level of crap"
Something I should have responded to a while back, Who said that Mao was an inspiration for them. Sources please, I really would like to know where you got this. And even if it is true, it doesn't mean anything. Arnold Schwarzenegger has been quoted as admiring Hitler's speech giving ability and political acumen, doesn't mean that he's rounding up Jews and attempting to conquer neighboring states, perhaps this Mao thing is in a similar vein.

Is this a good start?

[Darth Paxis]

Well both of them responded to my latest post, so here we go:

Nancy Pelosi said that Mao was one of the people she turned to most philosophically. Arnold saying that he admired Hitler is in the same vein they are both progressives and I wouldn't vote for either of them.

Followed by:

And Anita Dunn, i think white house communications direktor. also said she loved Mao. Theres a BIG problem for any person in government to say they like the biggest murder who ever lived on the planet. And ya know, i dont give a crap about blue dogs. They are just progressive democrats(although palatable) who like 2 pander to the christian/conservative voting bloc in the south, where almost all "blue dogs" come from.

Should this be moved to Debating Help? This does seem to have turned from a conservative response to the article, into me basically getting tips about how to proceed with them (not that I'm not grateful, you guys have been really helpful). As long as this is here, is his claim that Mao was the "biggest murderer on the planet" valid.

[Patrick Degan]

Nancy Pelosi said that Mao was one of the people she turned to most philosophically. Arnold saying that he admired Hitler is in the same vein they are both progressives and I wouldn't vote for either of them.

Hearsay bullshit is still bullshit. Evidence. Quotes. From reliable sources. Or it's hearsay bullshit.

And Anita Dunn, i think white house communications direktor. also said she loved Mao. Theres a BIG problem for any person in government to say they like the biggest murder who ever lived on the planet.

Hearsay bullshit is still bullshit. Evidence. Quotes. From reliable sources. Or it's hearsay bullshit.

[Darth Paxis]

Well here we are again, but we might be drawing to a close:

I don't suppose you have a source to back up your claim that Mao was the biggest mass murderer in history.
While we're at it, do you have sources about these Mao supporting statements, I would very much like to see them.

The response:

[My name here].jk.lol. If u want them immediately, you will have 2 ask [Government Hating Friend]. Cuz i dont have internet besides my fone. But thats sorta sad that u r actually questioning whether the policies of Mao killed more than any other tyrant.w.e.

And so I respond:

How is it sad when I've seen no proof behind your assertion. Honestly if you're going to ridicule me for asking for you to back up your claims, then what's the point of this debate. Either put up or shut up.

He just responded:

I understand u wanting proof 4 the Mao statements. But idk wat textbooks uv read. Its an established fact he was the biggest murderer in history, even eclipsing Stalin.

Well, maybe this will continue, at least he's willing to provide proof about some things (eventually )

[Alyeska]

(shakes head)

They wanted a source that these Obama staffers are big supporters of Mao. Mao's atrocities are rather well documented and accepted.

[Razorgeist]

Keep up the good work Praxis your giving me a pointer or 2.

[Samuel]

They wanted a source that these Obama staffers are big supporters of Mao. Mao's atrocities are rather well documented and accepted.

Stupid question, but why didn't the Chinese authorities destroy the records? Why do people who commit mass murder, purges or famines keep records of the atrocities they have commited?

They are just progressive democrats(although palatable)

Bluedogs are progressive... despite progressive being associated with leftist and the defining characteristic of bluedogs is their opposition to healthcare which is the main current progressive/leftist cause.

[Illuminatus Primus]

The Mao and Stalin kill-counts are constantly inflated by Western propagandists by using standards that are never applied to Western states, and of course "Communism" is portrayed as a monolithic mind-control cult that produces identical outcomes regardless of historical, economic, cultural, and political circumstances or differing personalities of historical actors. That way, authoritarian police states (frequently supported implicitly or explicitly by the U.S. or other Western, capitalist powers, and of course being organized on broadly capitalist economic lines as well) have their kill counts deflated and disassociated from capitalism as a system and the U.S. or Western civilization. Of course, when capitalist illiberal or authoritarian governments slash policies benefiting the public, the resulting pauperization and excess deaths due to starvation or illness etc. is chalked up to "corruption", "beyond their control", "culture", or some other variety of bitter pill not the responsibility of the new regime and its policies, even if they were consciously enacted aware of their likely outcome and often at the behest of the U.S. or other benefiting capitalist powers; contrariwise, development failures in China are solemnly and sanctimoniously condemned as deliberate or criminally negligent - and the state managers as cold-blooded murderers. See if you can find ANY mainstream academic or intellectual discourse applying the same standards to U.S.-promoted (and often, coercively imposed) "shock treatment" as to Chinese or Soviet development. You can't. Stas I believe demonstrated, by nigh-identical criteria to those held against Leninist states where "inadequate social services = murder" is the desired outcome, that five hundred thousand people or more died because of shock treatment in - if I recall correctly - the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic/Russian Federation alone, composing only half or less of the former Soviet Union's population (admittedly, it may have been the FSU as a whole).* That of course excludes its imposition in the former Eastern Bloc of USSR satellite states, and sidesteps the equally pertinent, though conventionally more controversial, question of the affect of similar policies imposed on U.S. clients. It is unthinkable thought that we bear the same standards that official enemies do. Any authoritarian police states who are too obvious to ignore are arbitrarily reassigned to de facto Communism, or Communism-in-fact-if-not-by-name by the propagandist.

Of course, the 19th century (and sometimes pre-World War II) is arbitrarily declared "hands-off" to applying standards imposed against the brutal slave-industrialization of Leninist states in the 20th century. Maybe, just maybe, that's so the West could get off free having completed its phase of capital accumulation and industrialization with great and brutal oppression of the entire societies of the colonial periphery, of the domestic democratic and labor forces, and often literal chattel slavery. The USSR is evil for using GULAG labor for the Stalinist revolution from above. The U.S. is not evil for depopulating the entirety of the middle North American continent of its indigenous population and depriving it of its fairly possessed natural resources (in effect, massive state theft for the subsidy of a developing capitalist economy), for developing with foriegn capital collected on the backs of the black chattel slaves and then their disenfranchised, legally-imposed quasi-serfdom of Jim Crow, for conquering half of Mexico in a completely unjustified, brazen war of aggression (the supreme international crime, by our own standards), or for our open and gratuitous colonization and domination at the turn of the century in Latin America and the Far East. One may reply that the U.S. was a democratic society and the USSR was not, but that both neither changes the character or extent of its crimes in pursuit of policy and according to official ideologies, and by consistently-applied modern standards the U.S. was not a functioning liberal democratic society until well into the 20th century (arguably not until after the Civil Rights Movement).

One may complain that it is unfair to hold the U.S. to standards that were not predominant at the time. I would reply that even mainstream contemporary European commentators criticized, sometimes bitterly, U.S. treatment toward the indigenous population, the black population, and even labor. One may also wonder if it is not in service of the same double-standards that the absolute moral standards a state must meet are not determined as predominant and universal until the "good guys" (the U.S.-aligned, capitalist West) met them for the most part domestically (with responsibility for imperial crimes abroad systemically denied as fair comparison and domestic exceptions to this rule are not even acknowledged as existing) and had successfully completed its messiest phases of capital accumulation, industrialization, and political development. The West got a free pass for killing, oppressing, jailing, stealing, and enslaving in service of economic development and state power, because it did it (openly and brazenly, anyway) in the 19th century, mostly, I guess. Its dominant political-ideological systems are off-limits to systemic criticism and guilt-by-association versus the Leninist states and "Communism" - or even "Socialism" in general! -, again entirely without any substantive basis.

I don't intrinsically have a problem with these historical standards as long as they are consistently applied across different historical periods, hegemonic powers, ideologies, and really existing economic or political systems. The conclusions of these arguments can only be maintained by establishing favored conclusions about Leninist states and crude generalizations about their political systems (for instance, the Glenn Beckism that all disfavored state action is "socialism" and all socialism is Leninism) as pre-supposed axioms from the start, and maintaining openly hypocritical and dishonest historical comparisons either arbitrarily by fiat to meet desired outcomes (Mao's a murderer thanks to Socialism, what about Ricardo's capitalism and the Irish Potato Famine?) or they follow from the pre-supposed axioms (we'll treat Pinochet different from Stalin because Stalin is Communist and Communism is more dangerous). It fails on account of four basic fallacies: presupposition or the loaded question, begging the question or circular reasoning, argument by fiat, and arbitrary excluding contradictory examples.

*Note: I am writing without access to adequate material, and my off-the-cuff figures on relative population of, and the matter of whether the RSFSR v. the FSU as a whole in this example may be mistaken. However, I don't think it effects the general point I am establishing.

[montypython]

The Mao and Stalin kill-counts are constantly inflated by Western propagandists by using standards that are never applied to Western states, and of course "Communism" is portrayed as a monolithic mind-control cult that produces identical outcomes regardless of historical, economic, cultural, and political circumstances or differing personalities of historical actors. That way, authoritarian police states (frequently supported implicitly or explicitly by the U.S. or other Western, capitalist powers, and of course being organized on broadly capitalist economic lines as well) have their kill counts deflated and disassociated from capitalism as a system and the U.S. or Western civilization. Of course, when capitalist illiberal or authoritarian governments slash policies benefiting the public, the resulting pauperization and excess deaths due to starvation or illness etc. is chalked up to "corruption", "beyond their control", "culture", or some other variety of bitter pill not the responsibility of the new regime and its policies, even if they were consciously enacted aware of their likely outcome and often at the behest of the U.S. or other benefiting capitalist powers; contrariwise, development failures in China are solemnly and sanctimoniously condemned as deliberate or criminally negligent - and the state managers as cold-blooded murderers. See if you can find ANY mainstream academic or intellectual discourse applying the same standards to U.S.-promoted (and often, coercively imposed) "shock treatment" as to Chinese or Soviet development. You can't. It is unthinkable thought that we bear the same standards that official enemies do. Any authoritarian police states who are too obvious to ignore are arbitrarily reassigned to de facto Communism, or Communism-in-fact-if-not-by-name by the propagandist.

Of course, the 19th century (and sometimes pre-World War II) is arbitrarily declared "hands-off" to applying standards imposed against the brutal slave-industrialization of Leninist states in the 20th century. Maybe, just maybe, that's so the West could get off free having completed its phase of capital accumulation and industrialization with great and brutal oppression of the entire societies of the colonial periphery, of the domestic democratic and labor forces, and often literal chattel slavery. The USSR is evil for using GULAG labor for the Stalinist revolution from above. The U.S. is not evil for depopulating the entirety of the middle North American continent of its indigenous population and depriving it of its fairly possessed natural resources (in effect, massive state theft for the subsidy of a developing capitalist economy), for developing with foriegn capital collected on the backs of the black chattel slaves and then their disenfranchised, legally-imposed quasi-serfdom of Jim Crow, for conquering half of Mexico in a completely unjustified, brazen war of aggression (the supreme international crime, by our own standards), or for our open and gratuitous colonization and domination at the turn of the century in Latin America and the Far East. One may reply that the U.S. was a democratic society and the USSR was not, but that both neither changes the character or extent of its crimes in pursuit of policy and according to official ideologies, and by consistently-applied modern standards the U.S. was not a functioning liberal democratic society until well into the 20th century (arguably not until after the Civil Rights Movement).

One may complain that it is unfair to hold the U.S. to standards that were not predominant at the time. I would reply that even mainstream contemporary European commentators criticized, sometimes bitterly, U.S. treatment toward the indigenous population, the black population, and even labor. One may also wonder if it is not in service of the same double-standards that the absolute moral standards a state must meet are not determined as predominant and universal until the "good guys" (the U.S.-aligned, capitalist West) met them for the most part domestically (with responsibility for imperial crimes abroad systemically denied as fair comparison and domestic exceptions to this rule are not even acknowledged as existing) and had successfully completed its messiest phases of capital accumulation, industrialization, and political development. The West got a free pass for killing, oppressing, jailing, stealing, and enslaving in service of economic development and state power, because it did it (openly and brazenly, anyway) in the 19th century, mostly, I guess. Its dominant political-ideological systems are off-limits to systemic criticism and guilt-by-association versus the Leninist states and "Communism" - or even "Socialism" in general! -, again entirely without any substantive basis.

I don't intrinsically have a problem with these historical standards as long as they are consistently applied across different historical periods, hegemonic powers, ideologies, and really existing economic or political systems. The conclusions of these arguments can only be maintained by establishing favored conclusions about Leninist states and crude generalizations about their political systems (for instance, the Glenn Beckism that all disfavored state action is "socialism" and all socialism is Leninism) as pre-supposed axioms from the start, and maintaining openly hypocritical and dishonest historical comparisons either arbitrarily by fiat to meet desired outcomes (Mao's a murderer thanks to Socialism, what about Ricardo's capitalism and the Irish Potato Famine?) or they follow from the pre-supposed axioms (we'll treat Pinochet different from Stalin because Stalin is Communist and Communism is more dangerous). It fails on account of four basic fallacies: presupposition or the loaded question, begging the question or circular reasoning, argument by fiat, and arbitrary excluding contradictory examples.

I've made some similar criticisms on other sites in the past about these issues too, having seen the amount of disingenuous manipulation of statistical data to reinforce assertions made on ideological axioms, which the analytical double standard done with regards to Communist states vs Western ones adds on top of that. If anything, circumstances like the economic development of China are necessary as a means of demonstrating that the sociopolitical rubric behind Western states like the US is more based on specific political conceits rather than self-evident truths propagandists love to spout off about. If one were to judge Western behaviour to the same standard non-western or communist states are subjected too (such as historians like Howard Zinn) the outcome's pretty damning.

[Illuminatus Primus]

The biggest and most brazen hypocrisy is treating the foriegn victims of imperial power as if they don't count. Your state is only murderous and vicious if it robs, beats, muzzles, neglects, or murders its own people, not other people. Africans, Asians, and Latin Americans are implicitly shunted into the role of unpeople who are not worthy victims. I agree that it is in a sense particularly vicious and pathological when a state robs, tortures, or murders its own domestic population, but its certainly not the huge black-white difference that those unwilling to compare the Stalinist and Maoist crimes to those of the West maintain (although this standard is, even in its original form, is particularly unfriendly to the U.S., who slaughtered, enthralled, and oppressed unpeople acknowledged by its own legal system to be its lawful subjects and thereby, domestic population; this is dismissed according to the arbitrary Fresh Start 1900/1918 Axiom).

[Justyn]

And Anita Dunn, i think white house communications direktor. also said she loved Mao. Theres a BIG problem for any person in government to say they like the biggest murder who ever lived on the planet.

Hearsay bullshit is still bullshit. Evidence. Quotes. From reliable sources. Or it's hearsay bullshit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xYL6Nvl3jI Anita Dunn herself saying that Mao is one of her favorite political philosophers. That's not hearsay, that is the words straight from the source. It has Glenn Beck in the corner, but he doesn't say anything.

You might want to try being a little more polite, it helps you not come off as quite so vitriolic.

[K. A. Pital]

In Russia, 100 000 people died of local wars alone, whereas in the USSR overall, 177 000. In the whole Second World in transition, 450 000 died of local conflicts alone, discounting other reasons for excess mortality.

40 000 excess deaths for other reasons than war occured in the immediate timespan of transition (1991-1994), and overall the period 1989-2002 was marked by over 3,2 million excess deaths (in all transition economies) resulting from the spike in violent and health-related mortality; this rapidly rising mortality was a result of the transition and the corresponding economic collapse, no matter how hard one wants to spin the facts. Worse yet, a greater part of these deaths related to the nations of the former Soviet Union because unlike nations of Europe, it did not enjoy as much financial help or institutional help from Europe, or the USA for that matter, which just took a collective "well your people are dying, why the fuck should we care" approach.

Such a high excess mortality is rather uncharacteristic for the 1990s and for nations with such high HDI ratings as the USSR and East European nations.

IP neatly summarized also my own position on the issue, which is that all nations should be held to equal standards in a given period of their historical development, during the phases as they advance from an agricultural society to an industrial one. If they utilize forced labour with high death tolls, deport people, execute them or cause privation or famine by their policies, the standards to which they must be held should be similar.

Most of the people who tend to subscribe to dogmatic views about the Second World are also those who flunked economic geography and macro-economy in general.

Mao Zedong's policies undeniably contributed to the famine in China, but they were hardly the only reason behind the famine. If you remove the famine, however, Mao is a typical asiatic dictator all in all. And if one doesn't remove the famine for Mao, why not restore the famine for Churchill, then, I am always tempted to ask? But no; please ask us no such questions, say the British. "He may have known", they say, "but he was not complicit". But Mao or Stalin hardly sent letters ordering to "starve" people either; they just continued requisitioning and exporting food, much like Churchill's government, or many other ones before it, did.

The GULAG workers on the White Sea Channel quite certainly died in the tens of thousands, but when we come to the issue of Suez, where the blood of tens of thousands of Egyptian forced labourers soaks every meter likewise, the Western powers are, as always, exempt from responsibility. "No sir, please don't talk about it. Only barbaric Russians can waste so many human lives in construction". Don't speak about the 22000 and 5000 workers dead on the Panama channel. That's off-hands. Don't talk about Erie canal. Don't talk about Manchester canal. All of them soaked up human blood in thousands.

And this is how it works until this day - Russia or China get painted as "killing people", while of course America and the West were just doing business. Collateral deaths are irrelevant, aren't they?

[Samuel]

Mao and Mother Teresa... okay, she is an idiot. At least her defense is reasonable- she admires the fact he managed to conquer China.

[Flagg]

And Anita Dunn, i think white house communications direktor. also said she loved Mao. Theres a BIG problem for any person in government to say they like the biggest murder who ever lived on the planet.

Hearsay bullshit is still bullshit. Evidence. Quotes. From reliable sources. Or it's hearsay bullshit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xYL6Nvl3jI Anita Dunn herself saying that Mao is one of her favorite political philosophers. That's not hearsay, that is the words straight from the source. It has Glenn Beck in the corner, but he doesn't say anything.

You might want to try being a little more polite, it helps you not come off as quite so vitriolic.

Wow, a single moron. That sure proves Obama is a communist who wants to kill all the old people and rape babies and shit on the flag and is a secret Kenyan Muslim behind 9/11!

Oh, and don't try that "polite" shit here you little cunt, it's actually against the rules.

[Simon_Jester]

And I wouldn't ascribe purely noble intentions on the democrats either for wanting even a symobolic bit of bipartisanship.

Oh, I wouldn't either. I just think the Democrats are finally starting to get it drilled into their heads just how bad an idea it is to try.

For most of American history, the opposition party was the rival of the party in power. They disagreed about many things, they competed for offices; the rivalry could get quite nasty. But only rarely do you see one party digging in like this to oppose all action on the other party's part. I can't think of any other example, but I'm sure there must be one or two.

In any case, when the opposition entrenches, it is because they have gone from being the rival of the party in power to being their enemy: they consider causing harm to the other party to be a worthwhile goal in and of itself, even if that means sacrificing policy objectives. It's the difference between diplomacy and war.

And when the Democrats try to negotiate with Republicans who are acting as their enemy... it's a mistake, whether their reasons are noble or not. Because the Republicans will cheerfully sit there and do nothing as a way of making their enemies look foolish.

You know, Broomstick, the American colonists paid less in taxes than did those living in England in the 1700s, and yet they yelled and hollered and preferred to dump tea into the harbor rather than pay taxes on it.

There was a larger issue at stake, and it wasn't just a matter of "taxation without representation." There was a serious problem with Whitehall enacting hamhanded policies that didn't take the facts on the ground in the colonies into account. For example, around 1770 they simultaneously barred the colonies from printing paper money, clamped down on colonial trade with foreign nations that would pay gold and silver for their goods... and enacted a slew of new taxes that were paid in gold and silver. To London.

So with gold and silver flowing out of the colonies, precious little of it flowing in, and no ability to print money to make up for it, the colonies got hit by a wave of deflation that caused a recession. It was especially unpopular with debtors, like the average American farmer... deflation always is.

This is why "taxation without representation" was a big deal, why it became a slogan: because the American colonies weren't even represented in Parliament, they had no way of setting the record straight and keeping MPs from deciding economic policy for the colonies without reference to what was happening in them.

The Teabaggers don't have that excuse.

[K. A. Pital]

She apparently brought Mao in context of winning a very complex partisan war against overwhelming enemy. Hardly an unreasonable context to use his example in.

So he wasn't a stellar personality and he had a huge mass famine in his rule? For fuck's sake, how many people quote "the great statesman" Churchill in Britain here and there? And how's he any different from Mao - because he's not a communist? Because he's White? So that's a get out of jail free card, right? Have to remember to use it in the future, then. How many people quote the Kings and Queens of the past, who were basically just the same shitheads?

How is she any different? I know. Because Mao is - shush! - a communist. If people quote the Pope, who used forced labour of Nazi slaves to the death, that's not as bad though; can't say the Pope was a bad person. If it's Churchill, or other British leaders who starved the Indians to death for centuries, that's not bad, that can't preclude people from quoting a great statesman, right? Can't say that about a civilized White Male Christian Empire, right? But Chinese, communist, and dictator? Sure thing, he's in the limits.

All these cultural taboos of the Americans make me fucking sick. Oh, no, it's a taboo, can't quote communists! Can't quote dictators! Can't quote X, can't quote Y. Moralist idiot hypocrites.

Theres a BIG problem for any person in government to say they like the biggest murder who ever lived on the planet.

My point is made. What's worse, reading Mao or aiding Mao to spite Russia?

[Elfdart]

I've made some similar criticisms on other sites in the past about these issues too, having seen the amount of disingenuous manipulation of statistical data to reinforce assertions made on ideological axioms, which the analytical double standard done with regards to Communist states vs Western ones adds on top of that. If anything, circumstances like the economic development of China are necessary as a means of demonstrating that the sociopolitical rubric behind Western states like the US is more based on specific political conceits rather than self-evident truths propagandists love to spout off about. If one were to judge Western behaviour to the same standard non-western or communist states are subjected too (such as historians like Howard Zinn) the outcome's pretty damning.

The Mao and Stalin kill-counts are constantly inflated by Western propagandists by using standards that are never applied to Western states, and of course "Communism" is portrayed as a monolithic mind-control cult that produces identical outcomes regardless of historical, economic, cultural, and political circumstances or differing personalities of historical actors. That way, authoritarian police states (frequently supported implicitly or explicitly by the U.S. or other Western, capitalist powers, and of course being organized on broadly capitalist economic lines as well) have their kill counts deflated and disassociated from capitalism as a system and the U.S. or Western civilization.

Years ago I started calling this kind of nonsense "Farrakhan Math", a kind of bizarre numerology where one takes a reasonably accurate estimate for the number of people killed, then multiplies it by six, ten or twenty. I chose the name because of Louis Farrakhan's insane tirades (like Glenn Beck, only not as deranged or stupid) where he claims that six hundred million Africans were killed in the African slave trade in the 18th and 19th centuries. The obsession with multiples of six million (rounded up, naturally) is the giveaway.

[Elfdart]

A significant portion is, yes, because Obama is black. I'm not sure how to determine how of it is due to that.

Surely someone could do a study comparing the amount of death threats Clinton received with that received by Obama (assuming data on anti-Clinton threats has been collected). If Obama is found to have received significantly more threats than Clinton, that would lend support to the hypothesis that Obama's ethnic identity is a major factor behind Republican hatred of him.

I remember an article in GQ about the Clintons, and how the Secret Service was alarmed at the upsurge in death threats after Bubba got elected. They didn't want him to travel in anything less than an armored car.

[HamsterViking]

I am seriously disturbed at how radical American politics has become. Bush fucks the economy, ignores the constitution, gives our law enforcement enough power to make it start to look like the KGB, and gets us stuck in two ugly wars, but whenever people started to say "Hey, that's probably not a good idea." they were shouted down as traitors while the political leadership on the "left" went along with it. Now we have Obama trying to simply catch up with the rest of the developed world by providing the nation with the means to live a healthy life without going bankrupt, and suddenly there's a huge outcry, complete with terrorism, while leaders on the right are not only refusing to oppose it but actively encouraging it!

You know, I've always thought that the "I'm moving to Canada" crowd was full of pussies who would rather run away from their problems than try to fix them, but emigration is actually starting to sound like a good idea, as much as I hate to admit it. When it's gotten to the point where I am seriously concerned about my well being because of my political beliefs, something is seriously fucking wrong. Not that I'm seriously considering fleeing rather than trying to make my country a better place to raise my son, just that I'm starting to understand it.

I'm not shouting "OMG NAZIS!!1" but that is exactly what this situation is starting to look like to me. This isn't just some scary rhetoric and some disturbing policies, this is actual political violence. Night of broken glass... throwing bricks through windows... and they call me a fascist for supporting the idea that Americans should try to help take care of other Americans. Oh the joys of being a communist Texan.

[Akhlut]

Night of broken glass... throwing bricks through windows... and they call me a fascist for supporting the idea that Americans should try to help take care of other Americans. Oh the joys of being a communist Texan.

"When I feed the poor, they call me a saint, but when I ask why the poor are hungry, they call me a communist." - Dom Helder Camara

It's odd how fucking apeshit these people go when they see the government trying to address and fix a problem that Capitalism can't or won't fix. Capitalism and charity are never going to get poor people healthcare, yet, these shitfucks go crazy as soon as someone tries to remedy that, and bellow and rant and rave about oppression and Stalin.


Another addition for the Mao thing: how come no one brings up American political prisoners? How many black people were jailed because they wanted civil rights? How many Communists and Socialists were locked up even if they weren't violent? And, yet, that is one of the gravest of crimes committed by the Soviets and the CCP?

[Shroom Man 777]

The biggest and most brazen hypocrisy is treating the foriegn victims of imperial power as if they don't count. Your state is only murderous and vicious if it robs, beats, muzzles, neglects, or murders its own people, not other people.

Oh, yes, that is beautiful. You gotta love how people accuse so-and-so country because it's a theocratic/whatevercratic shithole that abuses its own people, and thus it's a bad country. But the USA/other Western country isn't a bad people because it doesn't do that shit to its own people... but just does it to OTHER people in OTHER countries. So that's good? Right? Fuck them. It's complete crap, and these people like to pretend that America/the West is a giant force of good in the world by ignoring all the shit their countries have done to other people.

To the rest of us, those fucks in the American government are no goddamn different. Support regimes in our country and pretend you're some beacon of light in the world? Why? Because we don't count, because we aren't real human beings, because the only real human beings on this world are blonde-haired blue-eyed American-visa card carrying fucks? Go eat shit, Amerikanskis.

Seriously, it's fucking disgusting.

Africans, Asians, and Latin Americans are implicitly shunted into the role of unpeople who are not worthy victims. I agree that it is in a sense particularly vicious and pathological when a state robs, tortures, or murders its own domestic population, but its certainly not the huge black-white difference that those unwilling to compare the Stalinist and Maoist crimes to those of the West maintain (although this standard is, even in its original form, is particularly unfriendly to the U.S., who slaughtered, enthralled, and oppressed unpeople acknowledged by its own legal system to be its lawful subjects and thereby, domestic population; this is dismissed according to the arbitrary Fresh Start 1900/1918 Axiom).

A country that was founded on the butchery of red-skinned Indians is, really, just wonderfully hypocritical when it cites how other countries - be it Chicom China, Russia or whatever - had a lot of people die when they were in their early years.

Oh wait, that's because native Americans and enslaved Africans don't count as people to them.

Oh the Amerikanskis.

[Patrick Degan]

And Anita Dunn, i think white house communications direktor. also said she loved Mao. Theres a BIG problem for any person in government to say they like the biggest murder who ever lived on the planet.

Hearsay bullshit is still bullshit. Evidence. Quotes. From reliable sources. Or it's hearsay bullshit.

Anita Dunn herself saying that Mao is one of her favorite political philosophers. That's not hearsay, that is the words straight from the source. It has Glenn Beck in the corner, but he doesn't say anything.

You might want to try being a little more polite, it helps you not come off as quite so vitriolic.

Well well... a right-winger who actually managed to back a claim with something resembling evidence. I would be impressed if it weren't for the fact that the quote in question was taken out of context of Ms. Dunn's overall statement, to be used as a "gotcha".

And as for the politeness demand —cram it.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Does anyone yet have any video or live recordings of racist statements that were hurled at the congressional black caucus members? I've been looking for it to decide whether or not I'll be giving up on the tea partiers, but so far I've only found people accusing and no proof. Given how many cameras were there (including footage taken by congressmen on their own smart phones) I would think there was a smoking gun out there.

[Darth Paxis]

Well, it's over, both of them have expressed disinterest in continuing the debate, here are their final posts:

History books claim that Mao killed millions of people or so I've heard http://www.moreorless.au.com/killers/mao.html ....thats far more than any one else. Even if he wasn't the biggest killer in history the fact that anyone in U.S. politics admires him is a travesty. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCtpLbSIko0

then
I am officially done with this debate. It's going nowhere, and I see no reason to continue... We are mature enough to agree to disagree.

I agree. Its useless. we keep going in a circle.

Thanks for all the tips and pointers, they were helpful.

@Razorgeist: I'm glad I was able to help, thanks for the support.

[Samuel]

Is he familiar with the concept of a strawman?

We are mature enough to agree to disagree.

There is a difference between legitamate disagreements (does the social improvement from higher growth balance out the costs) due to a lack of data and disagreement because one side was too stupid to understand the others arguement.