I must not debate.
Debate is the mind-killer.
Debate is the free exchange of ideas that brings total obliteration.
I will face debate.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn to blog about its path.
Where the debate has gone there will be nothing.
Only I (and an ostenation of Glenns) will remain***
Not since Brezhnev and Kosygin bared their souls for in-depth profiles of courage in Pravda has their been a more efficacious venue for debate than FoxNews’ aborted fete.
Fondly we recall the Hume/Cheney files.
Good God, what a world!
Leftism is the disorder of soul.
Oh, were you talking about Glenn Reynolds?
When any party is afraid to subject their ideas and principles to open debate, it’s clear that
they’re not only insecure & close-minded, but childish in their petulance.
Independents and “swing voters” will see this for what it is, the radical left’s desire for only a choir to preach to and their demand for nothing more than an echo chamber to resonate their anger and hate.
Mature, intelligent progressives should condemn this move. But instead we’ll get the same silence that emanates from so-called “moderate” muslims whenever a terrorist attack is perpetrated by their more radical bretheren.
I don’t think this “semanticleo” has the slightest idea where he/she/it is. This is a thread on Jeff Goldstein’s site, Protein Wisdom. It was written by a guest poster, BRD, in reference to a supporter of Glenn Greenwald – one, “Mona”, who has declared that debate was irrelevant – only undermining an antithetical political viewpoint. This being from a “progressive”.
That help orient you in time and (cyber)space?
Semanticleo,
Just in case you hadn’t been keeping up, this post was in response to a trio of comments by Mona (the editing on my part is simply to tone down the invective in her language, so as not to make her sound unnecessarily shrill, driven by personal animus, or otherwise unbalanced):
Then later…
And a bit after that…
Mona, is of course, by no means required to respond substantively to anything I say. I would rather than some comity be reached. But, then again, I’m not sure she would.
BRD
Is it my imagination, or is Mona’s moment of disillusionment with Republicans sliding backwards in time?
MayBee,
There is, what we might call a “behavior” in which folks start realigning their recollection to match their current self-image. I haven’t been tracking Mona’s life-of-the-mind. Frankly, she’s someone I had pretty much ignored as just being cranky and easily agitated.
I hadn’t really given her much thought until she decided that I was a loon sitting around anxiously calling for apocalypse. From there, I went to her site to respond, and was essentially, informed that public debate shouldn’t be, I guess, a way to exchange ideas.
I’m still rather appalled that she was so upfront about her absolute goals of shutting down debate.
BRD
Of course Mona doesn’t seem to recall the hateful invective directed by the so-called “tolerant” and “enlightened” liberals towards Nixon or Reagan or Ford.
While these same idiots demand that the administration “talk” with North Korea, Iran, Syria and other regimes sworn to eradicate our way of life, they see no hypocrisy in their refusal to “talk” with their own fellow countrymen that hold different political perspectives.
How “illiberal” can these so-called liberals get?
It’s very NPR… every one of Don Gonea’s reports suppresses/controls debate by including a passage like, ”What Mr. Bush didn’t say today was…” But Mona’s aversion to debate is much more straightforwardly expressed:
Consider:
I don’t have any comment really, but I think what I want to suggest is that Mona’s stance is founded less in contempt than in fear.
PVRWC,
I also enjoyed this little gem:
BRD
“Just in case you hadn’t been keeping up, this post was in response to a trio of comments by Mona”
John Major and BRD;
It seemed out of place on a site where the host frequently tries to re-acquire a thread by deletions and banning those he feels a threat. Attempt at
‘tongue in cheek’ was my bad. Sorry.
Oh – I was supposed to add that I think BRD’s appropriation of the litany is exactly on target.
Semanticleo,
Honestly, I can’t vouch one way for the other by it – I would say that this kind of behavior here would come as a surprise, but I’ve never run into it first hand.
But no worries about the tongue-in-cheek, that kind of thing is always hard to pull off in this format.
Cheers,
BRD
Semanticleo, what BRD is saying, quite politely – and, in fact, waaay more politely than I – your effort flopped. Badly.
My response was simply the bucket of water thrown on stage. But it seems you fear the shepard’s crook coming out to pull you off, instead.
Well, Major John, to be fair, water is kind of hard to pull off in blog comments too.
Color me overclocked, on that one!
Actually, I just enjoy banning semanticleo.
Stunning, really, how people who are essentially strangers can hardly BELIEVE my temerity when I ban them for, well, coming onto my site and lying about me.
You sure are polite, Mr. BRD – For a warmongering, genocide-cheering, deathbeast, that is.
I’ll stop grumping in your thread and get back to my work then.
Take away her stillsuit and feed her to the sandworms!
What’s that you say semanticleo…?
Doesn’t even compare to BDS. Not in the same ballpark.
It’s been nearly 7 years since the 2000 election. Roll that back a year or two to get the full flavor of the times.
Anyone want to take the bet that Mona wasn’t under 18 then? And this is just a talking point and her assuming the mantle of being politically aware enough at the time to “become uncomfortable with the right’s vile, base and sheerly maniacal hatred of both him and his wife’ isn’t a charade?
This reminds me of something I ran across some years back on the Pandagon site. One of the principles there, Jesse?, was going on about how he’d always owned a deep and analytical opinion on some matter in the past that bore on some current contretemps from the moment it became important and so on and so forth. His age was well known, and some commenter pointed out that he’d been TWELVE at the time the event occurred. His reply was that he came from a very politically aware family that often talked about such matters at the dinner table or some such nonsense.
Mona is a fraud.
Bleg – does anyone have a link to that counter-insurgency article/study that made teh rounds within the last 6 months ago, or so?
It addressed the historical winning record of insurgencies, and basically indicated that they generally tend to lose, but have a roughly 8-10 year lifespan. It might have been out of the Naval War College, but I don’t feel like digging through the catalog right now, because I’m not certain they are the folks who put it out.
Thanks!
BRD
“Monaâ€Â, who has declared that debate was irrelevant – only undermining an antithetical political viewpoint. This being from a “progressiveâ€Â. -Major John
But, sir…that is what a progressive DOES. I’m not sure of your age, (or Mona’s for that matter) but I’m an old cold warrior; this is old classic Communist subversion on a personal level acted out in cyberspace.
I wonder if Mona cares or even knows that she is merely repeating old Soviet propaganda methods and meme’s that were created for export as tools for agitators, and useful idiots like Mona, to push the revolution forward?
Yes, this is an old tired beast I have seen before. Nothing has changed.
It is by hate alone she sets her keys in motion. It is by the juice of Greenwald that memes acquire speed, the blog acquires stains, stains become a warning. It is by hate alone she sets set her keys in motion.
Army I think. If I recall correctly, it was a professional study that was originally published on one of the Army’s websites.
Juice of Greenwalds? Umm….?
BRD,
That should be stressed as an interesting study that one should relate the the speech Bush gave way back about a month or so after 9/11 when he outlined the new US policy concerning GWOT, state sponsored terror, and the repercussions those states would face in the GWOT.
He mentioned in that address that winning the GWOT would take many years and that America need o think in terms of ten or more years. Dovetails nicely with the study you mention.
Then again, if the chief executive isn’t at least trying to stay ahead conventional wisdom for better or worse, he shouldn’t be chief executive
Jeff- At some point, it may be necessary to do what Rob Avrech does – post a notice above the comments saying to the effect: “This is private property. So, I can kick you out of you disobey the rules.”
People forget that about blogs…
RE: Mona; She’s less of a person with an agenda and more of an agenda that has acquired a sort of living organism to do its bidding.
Thus, It would be difficult to expect her to want to debate unless she was certain it would come out in her favor from the outset.
Trouble is, if you are a person who enjoys free debate, shutting someone like her out gives the wrong impression of your motives.
But, one of the rules of debate is:
“Don’t be a dick.”
You’re also, I hear, disallowed to discuss the rules of the debate in the debate.
There’s a third cardinal rule, probably, something like, “May truth prevail.”
And, I guess, since she disqualifies probably on all three points, whether she likes debate or not is really moot- she’s never going to be involved in one.
BRD
I’ll poke around and see if I can get it for you.
This?
Sgt Ted:
Funny you should mention that…
That’s from an September 2005 post by our old pal Armed Liberal.
Sgt. Ted,
No, Mona isn’t nearly self-aware enough to figure anything like that out.
We must be nearly contemporaries in age. I didn’t stay with the Intelligence branches after 1973, but I’ve been places as a civilian, and I’ve met and had dinner with one of the folks who originated the stuff, in the DDR back when there was such a place.
According to him, by the mid-Eighties the main effort along Nevskiy Prospekt was the insertion of feedback. They were well aware that, in the light of cold logic, what they were peddling didn’t make any sense—after all, the goal was to establish that opening a McDonalds was imperialism and sending a Soviet division to take over the place was not—and if it was left alone it tended to wander beyond the white lines. They were kept busy monitoring the situation and correcting the wilder tendencies when they popped up.
What we’re seeing nowadays is the machine with no governor, spinning faster and faster with no operator at the controls. Bits are already starting to fly off here and there, as when the international Left told Iraqi leftists to fuck off and die because they weren’t anti-American enough, and the increasingly shrill demands that their pronouncements be accepted as REVEALED TRVTH and any debate be considered theosophist heresy. We should be prepared—the wreckage left when it finally falls apart won’t be pretty, and the flying shrapnel is going to hurt some people.
Regards,
Ric
Yarg!!! Thanks!!
http://www.carlisle.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/06summer/barno.htm
That is the only thing that came to mind right away. But it doesn’t sound like the one you wanted.
Lame metaphor attempt while trying to match up the Dune quote; trying to point out she’s inspired by Greenwald’s writings. Grossness occurred to me only after I wrote it.
Let’s begin here:
And add this:
Yeah, I’ve had enough of “debate”, too. Mona and her gang are actively on the other side in the great struggle of our time. Either you believe America is a force for good in the world or you do not. Guess which side of the divide Mona’s “dedicated seekers of peace” are on?
Well I just took a brief look at that memetics/social contagion page. That looks like pretty evil stuff to me.
If you actually buy into the horseshit idea that anyone can be infected with behavior/ideas without a conscious choice, then I certainly see why Mona would not want to debate anybody.
I guess according to Mona, alternative morality is nothing more than a virus to be stamped out. But if humans are mindless little sticks of RAM to be uploaded with whatever you send them then what are your motivations for sending any signal at all, unless YOU thought of a morality that YOU have chosen to be of value.
What an inhuman way to view your place in the world.
Maj. John,
Doesn’t look like the specific one, but, however, there are some bits in there that I think may have a lot of applicability to questions of deterrence. Or more accurately, some tools that can be applied at the strategic thinking level to help migrate over the mindset.
Thanks!
BRD
SGT Ted, I am 40 – I enlisted in 1985 to be an 11B and stand up to Ivan, heh heh.
Of course, I did use “quotes” around “progressive”.
Lay off Mona!
Why, only a few decades ago, with that attitude and a military force willing to forego debate, she could have occupied Czechoslovakia.
Show some respect.
I think a lot hangs on the “sufficient condition” that would govern whether a meme is distributed or not. I was mostly just struck that Mona and the sociology guy both share a view of communication as pathology.
All in the name of being a dedicated seeker of peace, of course.
It does explain the extreme aversion to Fox News. They won’t even watch a minute of it, as if it would pollute them or something.
Why don’t leftists want to debate the war with you, BRD?
It’s not because they’re cowards, or think they might lose the debate, or don’t believe in talking out our differences.
They just aren’t interested in reconciling our views with theirs, and they don’t want to convey any legitimacy on our views.
They’ve decided that we’re evil, sociopathic mass murderers who support the worst president ever in a terrible, genocidal fuck-up of immense proportions.
And the solution is to cut us out of politics entirely. Debating us undercuts that. The only time they acknowledge us is with mockery (that’s safe, because it doesn’t confer any legitimacy on the target). They want to convince Americans that Republicans are beyond the pale, etc. That we’re weird vampire creatures who should be shunned and hated.
I don’t know how to beat this. If you get too irate about the mockery, people will say you don’t have a sense of humor. If you make fun of them, they’ll say you’re questioning their patriotism, being racist, or otherwise insensitive. I suppose we just have to pick a good candidate, run him, and convince Americans that it’s okay to vote Republican.
More of the same on this thread.
Glenn Greenwald, I am told in no uncertain terms in this thread about questioning masculinity, is capable of “rigor  legal and otherwise ‗
OK then.
“leftists?”
Mona is one person, Daryl.
Straw man doesn’t equal debate, remember.
alphie, according to Mona, we should approach you like a pathogen. Myself, I’ve had my shots.
You should know, alph.
alphie, if self-parody were an Olympic event, you’d be GOLD in Beijing.
All we have to do is wait until anti-Republicanism is so establishment that all the rebellious youths immediately become Republicans.
Not quite. You can argue that (as William Burroughs (sometimes) and Foucault (sort of) did) without positing a hierarchy in which one communication, the one that says it–yours and your own’s–is pure, while all other–“ours,” inevitably–is pathological, or pathogenic, or, to best fit the pseudo-Darwinist rhetoric of the meme warriors, dysgenic. But the hierarchy’s the thing.
Sure took a long time to say why she doesn’t want to talk. Good grief. Strange thing, I’ve come to the same conclusion she has.
Not at all; she first gained some small measure of notoriety commenting as a “conservative” on the l2r blog before they shut down comments. It was clear even then that she was either an idiot or a shill.
BRD,
ICYMI, happyfeet answered your bleg.
Here’s the article, which JG discussed here.
BTW, the psychology of people like Mona and GiGi was the subject of a piece in Monday’s WaPo:
Though the scientists who did the study would say the same dynamic occurs on the pro-victory side, we can all see that in this case, BRD wanted to dialog and Mona who refuses to do so.
Incidentally, there are other interesting numbers in that study. In particular, people who were not strongly for or against the invasion of Iraq have attitudes about Pres. Bush’s motives that hew much closer to the pro-invasion side than the dedicated seekers of peace, a/k/a the BDS crowd.
Well, yeah. That’s to be expected. BDS had it’s birth in the progressive’s political angst over the failure of Gore to cement the legitimacy of ‘feel your pain’ politics. That was in 2000. A year before 9/11 and 3 years before OIF BDS was already in full regalia.
Being afflicted with BDS has nothing to do with being anti-war. It’s convenient – you can be antiwar without being BDS, but must be antiwar to be BDS – but only because they’ve transformed it from America’s into Bush’s war.
It’s reasonable to expect the attitudes of those not holding strong opinions about the necessity of the invasion to be moderate in attributing Bush’s motives. BDS won’t hold any attraction over them. BDS holds attraction to a relatively minor splinter group.
Given a defining moment like another attack, moderates will declare rather quickly and not for the BDS camp. The dems now holding the legislatures damn well know this too. And that adds more to the frustration of the crowd who expected the 2006 elections to deliver control over the narrative into their hands in January.
What is the opposite of the “BDS camp” JPT?
Mental health.
I’m just laughing over alphie—the man without a wordview—assuming there is an “opposite” to BDS in his question.
I didn’t assume any such thing, Karl.
JPT did with this statement:
…moderates will declare rather quickly and not for the BDS camp.
I think even though a large majority of Americans disapprove of the job Bush is doing, they pity him rather than hate him.
The Pity Party?
Alphie, go play in the street, you ignorant moby.
Because they’re a bunch of totalitarian thugs.
Inre Mona:
– David Pryce-Jones
Mona Update!
Heaven forbid that anyone link to her site after the base assertion that we’re all a bunch of psychopaths sitting around arousing ourselves to pictures of carpet bombing.
No, it’s much better if I lump a whole bunch of people I disagree with into one group and then try to totally and absolutely deny their input. Oh, yeah, and didn’t she say that she meant to do this for the entire range of political ideas she found sufficiently, well, let’s just say, not like hers?
Hey! I thought the Dune quote was funny. I also figured that linking to source material wasn’t a bad idea, given that, you know people might object to the manner in which they were quoted.
No, but she can’t resist the temptation to tell us so many, many times, that she sure as heck not paying any attention. Besides which, once she asserts that neither Jeff – nor any of his guest posters or commenters – can ever be trusted around a keyboard again, I baffle at her continuing reassertion of her conversational ‘virtue’.
Well that, and to throw a few bombs in reply and tell the world how very, very scary contrary ideas are. I mean, I have to salute such a stern and willful misreading of intent. As she admitted earlier, it wasn’t the choice of phrase, but rather the idea that she abhorred.
Which probably is the first time that I can recall – off hand – anyone so proudly obsessing over the fact that while a stopped clock may be right twice a day, this particular stopped clock can never ever be right again, simply because of her philosophical fiat.
Aahhh… Relaxing… From earlier:
Mona will face debate.
Mona will permit it to pass over her and through her.
And when it has gone past she will turn to blog about its path.
-George Orwell
N. O’Brain,
That’s a fascinating quote. It ties something that I’ve been wondering about for a while – the Platonic view of mankind and some of the behaviors of the authoritarian left.
Interesting.
BRD
The true irony of the leftist “intellectual” is that, come the revolution, they are usually the first ones down in the cellar being shot in the back of the neck.
As one of those godbag christofascists I am continually amused by the sorts of attitudes expressed by mona and her ilk that so stunningly display many of the same faith righteousness that can be found in … Christianity. (and complained about)
I used to think the notion of “faith based ideals” was segmented to specific topics; The Peace Movement, Global Warming, Evolution, and more exhibiting the clarion calls of “denier” and “stooge” for the non congregant. After reading through Mona’s comments I’ve come to realise that charismatics who speak in tongues and handle snakes have nothing on the Church of Misery Pimpage and the Order of the Brave New World.
They have faith, you see, that all they believe is right and good (and smarter) and that you and I are evil, worthy only to be dismissed out of hand and earnestly “prayed” over to STFU for 20 years or so. Pay the indulgences, worship at the altars of Peace and Multiculturalism and The Nanny State and all will be forgiven; the fuzzy embrace of your betters is but a checkbook away.
I can’t stop laughing.. and crying …
And they are astonished when it happens.
alphie wrote:
Of course, “not for the BDS camp” does not necessarily mean that the alternative is the “opposite,” which is the word alphie used.
As usual, alphie’s attempt to distance himself from himself fails… though you can’t blame him for trying.
Mona, via BRD’s update:
Which I guess means that Mona has no clue as to how much her stated positions—not to mention her mode of thinking—jibe with those of the JBS.
Jeff: You’re going to have to change the locks. Monkyboy and semanticahole managed to get back in.
Um, nope. As has already been pointed out to you, I made no such assumption. That you found it implicit in my statement is in your column, not mine.
Look at it as set theory. The range of American political allegiance to any particular set of related beliefs is quite diverse. Some of these sets intersect, some are subsets of others, and some stand alone without intersecting any other sets. The concept of opposite doesn’t operate well if at all in set theory.
Back to Karl’ original observation:
What he is saying here, and which I did agree with, is rather obvious to the most casual observer of American life (assuming said observer is not part of the BDS camp, but I’m getting ahead of myself). Let’s call that second group the majority, since I expect thats true. The numbers seem to indicate that the pro-invasion side is a subset of the majority – at least some ideological and/or politics intersect (are shared). It also indicates that BDS is a political set that does not intersect with those who may not hold strong convictions about the Iraq invasion either way (again, that pesky majority that the BDS crown just can’t seem to get to sing the right tune). I pointed out in the comment that you refer to that the BDS camp does indeed share some common elements (viewpoints) with the adamantly antiwar camp for example, but that camp is not the one Karl is referring to.
As I said in the comment you referred to, the democrats in the legislature are fully aware of this, and the are having increasing difficulty in playing to the BDS camp while simultaneously satisfying their own members whose self-interest in preserving their elected roles next time around gets in the way. And so they seem paralyzed – unable to satisfy all, they satisfy none. Doesn’t seem like any sort of expression of mandate that representing the majority viewpoint would lead one to expect.
Then again, there is another way to look at the core question you raised. BDS is a pathology. One that I have no doubt would heal itself with time and maturity in many cases, in many others require counseling, and for the worst cases, intervention may be indicated. At any rate, obsessive hatred based on such phantasmagorical interpretations of cause and effect, logic, and in some glaring cases, chronological sequence of events, that focuses primarily on one man and secondarily on the neighbors across the street indicates at best a very poor state of mental health and at it’s extreme, full blown psychosis.
So the opposite, the opposite condition so to speak, of being ensconced in the BDS camp would be enjoying good mental health.
Hope that clears things up for you. If not, well, I have just acknowledged you for the last time since I’m not qualified to deal proactively with issues of mental health. It’s best to urge you to seek out a trained professional and leave it at that.