tpaine posted:who are you even talking to, fokker?
i thought that would be obvious, goatstein and the people who think his post is a response to the OP. i mean, i agree that greenwald is a thin-skinned mass media reject, over his career i've personally provoked him into losing his shit in his responses a few times because it's really easy. and i really miss the old Worst D&D Poster the thread, but its leading men are not representative of the movers of the media or their handlers in the government. they're complete goobers who spend all their time on the outside. and this "well you don't interact with the ruling class as much as i do" thing, come on. this isn't old LF circa 2005. all of this seems really primed for aging regret filled posting-men to imagine they are just like their rulers and every point scored against evilweasel is a blow to tyranny. i know no one would admit that here but that's how it looks.
while i don't agree with a lot of your post tpaine, i think its a good observation that we usually know what happens from what we observe from the outside.
roseweird posted:he doesnt like this abstract sad discussion so is trying to turn it back to the more focused political discussion taht was happening
yeah this shit about how thomas friedman is staev with a byline is for the birds.
this book on the subject is really interesting and amazing and i loved reading it
http://www.amazon.com/Cooperative-Species-Human-Reciprocity-Evolution/dp/0691151253
just posting it b/c i see tpaine and others posting these fatalistic ideas over and over and it saddens me
NoamTrotsky posted:tell me more about how the elite are special and exceptional daddyholes.
they are special in that they run things and have more; they are exceptional in that they are the exception to the rule. people get into different circumstances and they change. you can't just leap sideways from some dickhole you used to run over on SA to the people actually sitting down to discuss what is to be done about Putin.
conec posted:i`m on team daddyholes btw ~~
confirmed.
tpaine posted:i'm sorry for trying to turn this into a more grandiose discussion, you can go back to plinking away at whatever gay little targets you've set up for yourselves
funny, seems more like you're trying to derail the thread with defeatist non sequiturs.
'human nature' and evolution are commonly deployed explanations for the capitalist system (which, by the way, is what i refer to when i say 'the present system'). the problem is that capitalism is far from natural in the sense of biological evolution. capitalism always has to rely on extraordinary methods to perpetuate itself. michael perelman's the invention of capitalism is, imo, a good account of how the historical process of capital accumulation has been concealed - fundamental to this concealment has been the propagation of this myth of capitalism as a natural evolution towards a more efficient, if not emancipatory, system of production.
given that none of us posting in this place believe the capitalist system is either efficient or emancipatory, why would any of us want to naturalise it on the even more abstract level of human nature?
obviously the rich are not special in the sense of being another species. perhaps it's worth considering the other ways in which they are different. the culture of the rich is, i claim, essentially a program to produce generation after generation of the kind of sociopaths required to perpetuate brutality against the poor. it can be difficult to comprehend how different that culture really is. if you haven't seen the documentary 'born rich', i recommend it as a small window into that world.
7xhuSxyHWRw
it is the military-intelligence complex that plans and performs the pointy end of oppression, and its culture similarly insular. john singlaub, who i mentioned earlier as the head of the OSS society and a revered figure in the contemporary special operations community, worked closely with ted shackley in the korean and vietnam wars, including the development of the phoenix program. john mccain was famously tortured as a POW in vietnam. the ongoing involvement of people like this in directing covert operations means that huge amounts of trauma and self-justification are invested in perpetuating the most vicious kinds of brutality imaginable.
in short: this is battery acid you slime
daddyholes posted:NoamTrotsky posted:tell me more about how the elite are special and exceptional daddyholes.
they are special in that they run things and have more; they are exceptional in that they are the exception to the rule. people get into different circumstances and they change. you can't just leap sideways from some dickhole you used to run over on SA to the people actually sitting down to discuss what is to be done about Putin.
Sure, but they are the same people. They think the same way and come from the same place. The question isn't if Eric Cantor is more powerful than evilweasel. The question is if he is fundamentally better. The answer is no.
tpaine posted:Petrol posted:tpaine posted:i'm sorry for trying to turn this into a more grandiose discussion, you can go back to plinking away at whatever gay little targets you've set up for yourselves
funny, seems more like you're trying to derail the thread with defeatist non sequiturs.
'human nature' and evolution are commonly deployed explanations for the capitalist system (which, by the way, is what i refer to when i say 'the present system'). the problem is that capitalism is far from natural in the sense of biological evolution. capitalism always has to rely on extraordinary methods to perpetuate itself. michael perelman's the invention of capitalism is, imo, a good account of how the historical process of capital accumulation has been concealed - fundamental to this concealment has been the propagation of this myth of capitalism as a natural evolution towards a more efficient, if not emancipatory, system of production.
given that none of us posting in this place believe the capitalist system is either efficient or emancipatory, why would any of us want to naturalise it on the even more abstract level of human nature?
obviously the rich are not special in the sense of being another species. perhaps it's worth considering the other ways in which they are different. the culture of the rich is, i claim, essentially a program to produce generation after generation of the kind of sociopaths required to perpetuate brutality against the poor. it can be difficult to comprehend how different that culture really is. if you haven't seen the documentary 'born rich', i recommend it as a small window into that world.
7xhuSxyHWRw
it is the military-intelligence complex that plans and performs the pointy end of oppression, and its culture similarly insular. john singlaub, who i mentioned earlier as the head of the OSS society and a revered figure in the contemporary special operations community, worked closely with ted shackley in the korean and vietnam wars, including the development of the phoenix program. john mccain was famously tortured as a POW in vietnam. the ongoing involvement of people like this in directing covert operations means that huge amounts of trauma and self-justification are invested in perpetuating the most vicious kinds of brutality imaginable.
in short: this is battery acid you slimei remember why i stopped trying to argue seriously here
because you lose every argument?
postposting posted:idk if viewing the ruling class as ultrahuman geniuses is very conducive to action
it isn't, so don't
NoamTrotsky posted:Sure, but they are the same people. They think the same way and come from the same place. The question isn't if Eric Cantor is more powerful than evilweasel. The question is if he is fundamentally better. The answer is no.
"the question is", huh? you can't dismiss the possibility of worldwide media manipulation, manipulation of both sides of regional political struggles, things that have happened over and over and quickly become accepted parts of mainstream history once challenging them will do no good, because you suspect the people behind it are tendentious backstabbing goons like in your Japanese animes. that's what i mean about how vilerat was a CIA tool and a war criminal in my book but we all know he probably would not have made it to the post of ambassador or even to becoming one of those doomed CIA chuds launching mortars off the roof above his dead ass skull. none of that has anything to do with his virtue and it has everything to do with economic class. in contrast to him most of the people actually in charge are well-adjusted enough with good enough golf games and teeth and employees to do something like weaken one of their own client states by funding an insurgency or run flak for someone doing the same. it happens all the time.
roseweird posted:littlegreenpills posted:the removal of living labour from the production process is in principle a good thing and blindly decrying it is at bottom a kind of crypto-feudalism
really, i know this is a topic you feel strongly about but saying i'm "blindly decrying" something that i'm just bitterly describing is a little rude? idk. freeing people from the hard work of exploiting resources and manufacturing products is good in principle, i don't think this should stop us from observing that the practice, as compared to the principle, consists in automating production while exploiting any remaining profitable (ie easily, cheaply enslaved) workers for as long as possible, then leaving them in as advanced a state of destitution as possible, and providing little means for development and access to automatically produced goods, whose real luxury value can be as easily measured in the freedom from managing human labor afforded to the capitalist as it can be measured in the freedom of people from exploitative work (people who can then be abandoned to leisurely destitution)
sorry! I got a whiff of the Chesterton "freedom to earn an honest living" and im v allergic to it, the idea that a person has to "earn" a living in the first place flies in the face of all the unsellable stuff thats lying around. that's the reason capitalism's in crisis in the first place. sure, you can imagine a means of production that focused entirely on producing for the needs of those who "own" it, but we're not headed there. we're headed on a road toward the production of more stuff than anyone can possibly want
or, more accurately: "pre-history" was a time of great levels of cooperation, commun!sm; "history" is class struggle, a struggle which can be resolved