← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · TexasAnarch
Thread ID: 19797 | Posts: 1 | Started: 2005-08-24
2005-08-24 01:37 | User Profile
(So emboldened am I by il rag's interest in my stuff I am constrained by voices in Upper Room to share these, my thoughts on Sen. Russ Feingold's run for the money -- just because it is a most important 'take' ("False Exit") and because it won't be argued anywhere else. Surely that's what the OD board is for.)
[url]http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?pid=15612#comment[/url]
[B]FEINGOLD V. BUSH -- Nation. John Nichols
Los Angeles -- US Senator Russ Feingold, D-Wisconsin, will turn up the volume on his challenge to the Bush White House's failed approach to national security when he delivers a high-profile address Tuesday in this West Coast city.
The speech on national security, which will be delivered at LA's prestigious Town Hall forum, comes on the heels of Feingold's announcement that he will press for an Iraq "exit strategy" that would see US troops withdrawn from that country by December 2006. With his willingness to discuss a specific timelime for withdrawal, Feingold says, he is "breaking the taboo" that has stymied honest debate about the US mission in the Middle East and the point at which it can be declared complete.
The maverick senator is also drawing attention to a potential--if still decidely uphill--run for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination as a progressive alternative to prowar Democrats such as Hillary Clinton and Evan Bayh. [/B]
**/ FALSE EXITS (my blog)
Part I. Feingold
Certainly, one might expect that at some point that a U.S. Senator of the opposition party in a two-party political system, might speak up, as Russ Feingold has done, and call for a date-certain withdrawal of American forces from Iraq, ahead of other possible anti-war '08 presidential candidates, and over against pro-war Senators Hillary Clinton and Evan Bayh. The Nation's columnist John Nichols seems to endorse this idea as a good way out of Iraq.
In fact, it would be disastrous. .
It would leave unassailed those responsible for the carnage, and for leading the jackass party along, thus failing to confront the way of thinking that manipulated us into it. And, by doing so, would deprive this party of the jackass, upon whom the people had to depend to stop Bush and the neocons, of the one means of political, not to say personal salvation possibly remaining for them. Without which they could claim no justification for existing, except to serve lying mass serial murderers.
That only means of salvation is, if I may be forgiven for saying so, to kill the NEOCON in themselves. The NEOCON is, for instance, what comes out in Pat Robertson's "cheaper than starting a war" shot at taking out Venezuela's Chavez. (see below). Mentioning the threat this "leftist leader" Chavez (Reuters) posed by bringing in "Muslim extremism." One-upping Ari Fleisher? ââ¬â who could forget that "For the price of a single bullet" quip of the ex-White House public relations guy, the morning of the day the Washington D.C. area sniper attacks began. I digress; but not really. The topic is salvation, and the most glaring degenerate case of sin calling for this commodity is surely blaming and punishing another for what one is guilty of, oneself. If Jesus Christ ever promised anything at all to those who listened to him it would be to deliver them from this particular mode of self-abuse ââ¬â although it would not be easy, almost as if calling on them to be born again. Forget that sh!t, though. It's long, long past the point where that could do any good for those with NEOCON in their soul. There is an old alchemical tale that Adam smuggled some antinomy, the ultra-black metallic dye, when he and Eve were kicked out of Edin. ("Stibnite Republicans", unredeemed unredeemable Old Adam souls stained forever, taking everything to hell with them that will fit into their cart.)
No. While it is fitting that the Progressive strain in the state of Wisconsin's history, from Republican Lafollete in the 30's to Democrat Gaylord Nelson of the 50's should have provided soil for growing a Mid-West ââ¬Ëliberal' voice now, it is too late for that strain to efflouresce. Too much has gone down, even directly connected to Joe McCarthy, Appleton, John Birch Society, Sensenbrenner stain of Stibnite Republicanism, controlled by NEOCONS ââ¬â subsuming all tokens of concession, compromise, diplomacy as attitudes consonant with Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler. And they mean it: look what happened to Wellstone next door in Minnesota. If Feingold, representing (in the sense of vorstelung: presenting as a message) the multicultural Jewish + Catholic message riding in on Wings of Liberalism, he cannot be half-assed about it. He will, at best, go the way of Michael Moorem, who followed up a decent high-concept film effort with half-assed arguments, totally collapsing the anti-war balloon.
Feingold's exist is no way out, any more than John Kerry's bid offered one. It is more of the same old same old, whose success would guarantee perpetual injustice.
Part II. Lynching Pat Robertson ("Conservative U.S, evangelist called for the assassiantino of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, saying the leftist leader (sic) wanted to turn his country into "the launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremists."")
"WAIT!" ââ¬â you say. "This isn't lynching Pat Robertson going on here; this is Pat Robertson lynching (well, issuing death threat to) Venezuela's Chavez!"
"Ah," I sigh. "Don't you see that's how you are supposed to think it? It's lynching the ol' "conservative U.S. televangelist" star of the long, long running TV show "the 700 club". I wouldn't be surprised if some Protocols of Zion Jew put him up to it. The picture of the news crew on CNN in such high dudgeon ("HEY!- WHATTA WEIRDO NUTCASE ââ¬Â¦ calling for the leader of another country's life? ââ¬Â¦ criminal is what it isââ¬Â¦oughtta be a law") you had to know he was set up. (not that they were wrong, it's them saying it)
[B]But if the subject of state authorized assassinations was brought up for serious discussion one would be obliged to mention, at least ââ¬â in addition to the DC sniper shootings, above, whatever was behind them: (1) the CIA's covert operation in Northern Iraq in '96, about the same time Netanyahu and Christian right-wing conservatives were tying the knot, stringing some Kurd faction along to take out Saddam Hussein; word of which apparently reached the dictator, who had the place wiped out, as well as one could follow it ââ¬â only Newsweek was dealt in then, it seems. (2) The shooting of Sheik Yassin in Gaza authorized be the Knesset, carried out by the Israeli Defense Force from, it was announced, a U,S. Apache helicopter in 2003. After which, in response, it was said at the time, Falluja explodes with violence against U.S. "contractors", 4 bodies are hung swaying in front of American cameras from the bridge there, and a very, very cruel road opens up ahead between Baghdad and there. The month was April.[/B]