Il Douché and His Discontents: The 2016 Primary Voting Thread, Part 4

I read his 2012 book on conservatism; it was like a smart but attenuated college thesis.

i haven't read it ("the reactionary mind" right?) mostly bc every time i've seen it it seems like what i expect from him - partisan politicking under the guise of scholarship

i did quit reading him for a while after his incredibly dense attack on spielberg's lincoln (which got reposted a million places w/ the annoying implication that it was the "correct" left stance to take on the movie)

Trumpling in clip posted above arrested and charged: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/john-mcgraw-arrest-north-carolina-trump-protester-punched

idk who corey robin is but why are we having the "revolution is ruinous" conversation about whether or not america should have a mainstream political party willing to object to things like cia gun-running for right-wing dictators?

Er not arrested? Idk how u get charged w out being arrested

Xp

ticket to appear

i'm not sure we should conflate promoting the Sandinistas w/ objecting to cia gun-running for the contras. neither are ideal. nb i'm not a debayle fan or anything like that.

i don't think there's really anything wrong w/ bernie liking castro + ortega and i don't think hillary's attack on that pt is a great one (obv considering her own record). but inevitably if we're going to talk about socialist revolutions we're going to be talking about revolutions, right? it might be that in the case of nicaragua and/or cuba a revolution was necessary. idk i have complicated feelings on this pt i should probably work out elsewhere b4 discussing it here.

but like dlh, this is obv germane. hillary's comment in full was:

"I think in that same interview he praised what he called the revolution of values in Cuba and talked about how people were working for the common good, not for themselves. I just couldn't disagree more," Clinton said. "You know, if the values are that you oppress people, you disappear people, imprison people or even kill people for expressing their opinions, for expressing freedom of speech, that is not the kind of revolution of values that I ever want to see anywhere."

the breitbart organization has acted like a house organ of the trump campaign

but after trump's campaign manager threw a breitbart reporter to the ground...

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2016/03/10/3758686/trump-campaign-accuses-assaulted-reporter-of-lying/

If thats in the context of castro, seems legit to me.

Of course hillary has historically been fine w other regimes that do that shit so there's an element of hypocrisy there.

Xp

neither are ideal.

That seems unnecessarily non-committal, as if to say it was a coin toss.

The Sandinistas may have been somewhat corrupt and not above jailing opponents or pocketing bribes, but they were a big improvement over the deeply corrupt Somoza regime (which we backed) and were not murderous mercenary thugs like the contras (who Reagan illegally backed by, among other things, selling arms to Iran).

if bernie has the dem left sewn up then at least tactically she has to get the moderates excited, and nobody likes castro! and i don't doubt that her anticommunism is sincere. i hate to speak in horserace language but it's def something sanders should have been preparted for.

arguing about whether it's ok to have been against reagan's central american fuckery in the 80s seems nuts to me in 2016, truly ugly.

The Sandinista government implemented a policy of forced conscription for all men aged 17 to 35. The Sandinistas used this army to help guerrilla groups throughout Central America. Ortega pursued a policy of centrally planned economy and nationalization. Ortega took a very hard line against opposition to his policies: On 21 February 1981, the Sandinista army killed 7 Miskito Indians and wounded 17.[20] Forced displacement has also been documented to have occurred with the native population: 10,000 individuals had been moved by 1982.[20] Thousands of Indians took refuge in Honduras and 14,000 were imprisoned in Nicaragua. Anthropologist Gilles Bataillon termed this "politics of ethnocide" in Nicaragua.[21]

again, no one's hands are clean but i think we should be clear-sighted about what they did or didn't do

The tactics used by the Sandinista government to fight the Contras have been criticized by some historians for their suppression of civil rights. On 15 March 1982, the Junta declared a state of siege, which allowed it to close independent radio stations, suspend the right of association and limit the freedom of trade unions. Nicaragua's Permanent Commission on Human Rights condemned Sandinista human rights violations, accusing them of killing and disappearing thousands in the first few years of the war.

maybe necessarily. i'm sticking tho w/ "neither are ideal."

i read The Reactionary Mind, it's just a collection of book reviews from like LRB and NYRB and the Atlantic, not really even a proper book or a systematic investigation of ideas. my grad student polisci friend says his academic work is good. CR is obviously kind of a blowhard self-styled public intellectual but it was well-written, but heavy on biographical detail and character driven kinda pot-shots. my problem with it was Corey Robin doesn't seem get what's appealing about conservatism to conservatives and kinda just says the rich and powerful are motivated by fear of having their power sucked up from under them by the masses. which doesn't really explain why so many of the poor and powerless masses are conservatives. also there was a blog post of his recently where he talked about reading Ricardo with his graduate class, and it was so obvious he had never properly thought about classical economics before because he totally bungled it (even admitted so much) and it's like, dude, you're supposed to be the leftist who actually reads conservatives? classical/free-market economics is the most powerful conservative intellectual tradition, and like he didn't even seem to understand simplest intro shit so now i don't trust him at all

is there a good intro to ricardo text out there? not that i need to add to my reading list but i'll ask

oh i thought we were talking about a revolution here, is why i was confused: like, complaints that the democratic party has moved far to the right are irresponsible revolutionary complaints. i was a lil shocked, sry.

there is nothing inherent in hillary's above concern for liberal values that i can argue with and perhaps sanders is rather blithe or glib about this kind of thing (leftists often are, yes) but as you of course know such concern is neither the whole story re: u.s. interventionism (especially in this hemisphere) nor a very accurate summary of clintonian values. speaking of blithe and glib.

i think it's fair to complain that the democratic party has moved to the right! i just think that this argument that "in the past the liberals and the leftists could've gotten along but instead they fought and it was a disaster. but now you can't even work with these guys!" is disingenuous, ahistorical and dumb. again sorry if i'm misreading him but that's how i understood that post.

I can't help but flinch whenever anyone, pol or not, defends some aspect of Cuba. It's a reflex.

trump's campaign manager citing chuck c. johnson to call the assaulted breitbart reporter a liar

https://twitter.com/CLewandowski_/status/708020305013448704

Corey Lewandowski Verified account
‏@CLewandowski_
Michelle Fields is an attention seeker who once claimed Allen West groped her but later went silent. [link]

is there a good intro to ricardo text out there? not that i need to add to my reading list but i'll ask

― goole, Thursday, March 10, 2016 3:15 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i wouldn't bother actually reading him or any specific secondary text about him. you can understand comparative advantage, quantity theory of money and ricardian equivalence in like 3 minutes by reading wikipedia.

oh sweet, the marginalrevolution comment boxers aren't gonna know what hit em

lol

speaking of marginalrevolution -- should this post have me reconsider the legitimate fear from outsourced jobs among trump voters? "Trump's vote share in the Republican primary is in fact significantly positively correlated with that measure, meaning that he performed most strongly in areas where manufacturing's decline has been least important. Where manufacturing's decline was most intense, Trump received about 30 percent of the Republican vote, and where it was lightest, he received about 50 percent of the Republican vote."

i've been reading this btw: https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R42965.pdf - and i'd appreciate any other good reading leads about the legacy + impact of NAFTA and free trade

It takes one to no one:

Richard M. Nixon
@dick_nixon

As big a bunch of charlatans, idiots, hypocrites, liars, and the criminally stupid as you can imagine.

Marco Rubio ‏@marcorubio

Proud to welcome this group of national security experts to our team: http://rub.io/qeECpw

i don't doubt that her anticommunism is sincere

yep, proauthoritarian all the way

(which is what bad communists are anyway. fuck isms, fuck dogmas)

https://twitter.com/bobsaietta/status/708025400081948672

scott adams has been an unkind parody of an engineer for years

hoo boy

did not think i'd be posting an Inside Edition link in 2016

what kind of people support trump? well let's listen to... oh

http://www.insideedition.com/headlines/15177-trump-supporter-who-punched-protester-next-time-we-might-have-to-kill-him

I remember distinctly the inflection point where my position went from "Scott Adams totally gets it!" to "Scott Adams is fucking insane" and it was the coda of (I think?) The Dilbert Future where he attributed his success to the fact that he had said "I will be a successful cartoonist" 10 times out loud in a row, leveraging some metaphysical Candyman-esque energy.

have a feeling adams thinks he is making a scathing satirical point with that trump thing but i've been wrong before

xp to goole: what a charming guy in that video

if there's one thing we know is common to all ISIS operators, it's calmly exiting a venue with security while flipping off a hostile crowd

INSIDE EDITION tracked down the supporter, 78-year-old John McGraw, who was unrepentant.

When asked if he liked the rally, he said: “You bet I liked it. Knocking the hell out of that big mouth.”

And when asked why he punched the protester, he said: "Number one, we don’t know if he’s ISIS. We don’t know who he is, but we know he’s not acting like an American, cussing me... If he wants it laid out, I laid it out."

He added: “Yes, he deserved it. The next time we see him, we might have to kill him. We don’t know who he is. He might be with a terrorist organization.”

On Thursday, officials arrested and charged McGraw with assault and battery and disorderly conduct, according to the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office.

we know he’s not acting like an American, cussing me

moving the goalposts pretty far on which one of you isn't acting like an american, guy!

if there's one thing we know is common to all ISIS operators, it's calmly exiting a venue with security while flipping off a hostile crowd

hence their alarming youth appeal

jesus christ someone IS gonna get killed at one of these rallies soon

also they were playing "you can't always get what you want" in the background, hmm

it's like a real-life Eric Cartman is running for President on the Respect My Authoritaw platform

hey that suddenly reminds me, have those guys weighed in on why all meaningful opinions about trump are stupid yet?

man it's gonna be a really fucking ugly year isn't it

https://twitter.com/mmurraypolitics/status/707920850620649473

Longtime NBC/WSJ pollster Peter Hart on current field's unpopularity: "I've never, never seen anything like this"

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CdMKL4DXEAAnUeV.jpg

pretty amazing how high up on that list the incumbent black president is

kasich running with it there

kasich has by far the biggest unlisted "dunno?" demo there

Not shown: Zika virus; being mauled in the nuts by a rabid weasel

lol at Romney being even less liked than Cruz

feel like dogs and cats should be there both as a baseline and also as part of a longrunning battle to see which are more popular