Please adjust your tin foil hat and remain seated for an important message.

Message #1:

To: All U.S. Citizens and other Peoples of Earth

From: The Galactic Reptilian OverLords, Crips Division

Time: 00:00 G.M.T.

Subject: Your Total Subjugation and Control

Begin Message >

Implementation of Illuminati Kenyan Socialism Conspiracy 1.0 has now been completed under Prime Operative ShapeShifter Barack Hussein Obama, a.k.a. Big (Black) Brother.

Please speak clearly into your cell phones.

All privately owned guns must be turned in to the nearest ACORN office by noon tomorrow.

Sycophants will receive bread, circuses and free health care.

Non-sycophants (white supremacists, republicans, teabaggers, libertarians, anarchists, etc.) will be assigned to reeducation camps. Check with your local Democratic Headquarters for interment transfer times and places.

You have been assimilated. Resistance is futile. Please have a nice day.

End Message >

Clever but silly...

> 2

Well my S.O. has never called me clever - just the other thing.

So thanks.

It's okay...

For what its worth, I was amused.

sSme fat-heads will find this racist (it's not), while the lesser-of-two-evils crowd will find it irreverent (it is, and it should be). Good to see ya back online, jgl53!

:-) I'm surprised not to be receiving forwarded e-mails like this from my TP friends. Actually, I haven't heard much from them since election. Hmm...

I don't think anarchists should be treated as badly as the others.

> 8

Well the problem is that in these latter days many if not most republicans and many if not most libertarians ARE anarchists - when you scratch the surface, for all practical purposes, "wolves in sheep's clothing", etc., select your favorite cliché/analogy.

I.e., a person HATES government per se SO MUCH that he or she would like to see it shrunk to a size that could be drownd in a bathtub - I think at that point the person is about a hair and two licks from being a full-blown anarchist, and it become a distinction without a difference.

Yo, jgl, has it ever occurred to you to ask an anarchist what he or she believes -- and practices? 'Tain't like you to howl with the pack. -- Your anarchist buddy, Goddard

> 10

I am quite familiar with anarchists. E.g., I subscribed to Fred Woodworth's magazine The Match! for decades. I also read the libertarian magazine Liberty for decades. Emma Goldman, Bob Black, Mikhail Bakunin, Peter Kropotkin, anarcho-syndicalism, blah, blah, blah.

Anarchists are utopians similar to Marxists and Randroids. It's all basically the same wish-fantasy - everyone as individuals just agree do the right thing and no need for any societal organization. Only from the bottom up, dude - no from the top down needed. Ultimate individual freedom, man. No more suffering under the boot heel of The Man, dude.

Yeah. Far Out. Right On! What a wonderful world that would be.

Well, Hell's bells, even Heaven is a dictatorship.

Maybe when anarchists all get to Hell they can overthrow Satan and establish a fiery land of peace and love and brotherhood.

lol.

In re #11. Those of us who've read your various posts in various groups know you're pissed-off at virtually everything which lives or moves. If so inclined, maybe you could illuminate the rest of us as to at-least one thing in which you believe. It really doesn't matter whether it's the Law of Inverse Squares, Phlogiston, or World Peace Through Dentistry; anything might help to give your posts a little credibility beyond their bitter comedic value. Your pal (or trying), -- Goddard. PS: I understand that there is something in the nature of E-communications which can bring out the beast in all of us.
The very first Comment I ever rcvd on LT was from a total stranger telling me to go to Hell. I still keep that as a reminder at how feeble some of our efforts at community can be. Still, I am always bemused by people who seem to work so hard at annoying people who are, or ought to be, kindred spirits.

> 12

(Gee, HM, did I inadvertently piss on one or more of your heroes?)

I think I see your problem. You take interchanges on the internets seriously.

Don't do that.

Problem solved.

But to answer your question concerning at least one thing I positively believe - Well, I would agree with the first three verses of this song lyric:

http://www.stlyrics.com/songs/g/georgebenson8828/thegreatestloveofall521319.html

As to your determination that I am pissed-off at everything and everyone - well, please to not speak in absolutes - I hate that - so, then, there is a small plurality of things and people toward which/whom I certainly am NOT pissed-off.

E.g. here's some things that I am not only not pissed-off at - but that I actually love:

http://loinhac.com/loinhac.php?id=2004147eaf12&lang=en

(The 'you' in the lyrics would be my SO, not you HM. Sorry.)

As to people, e.g., I am not pissed-off at President Obama - I am just disappointed in some of his decisions. But I also realize he is privy to a ginormous world of info/data that I am not, so I give him the benefit of the doubt. Could be his decisions ARE the right ones.

Also, I am never pissed-off at people who agree with me - and especially those who even pay me compliments. E.g. someone recently referred to me on this thread as clever. I will cherish that unique evaluation to the day I reach room temperature.

In re #13. Since I don't have heroes, I don't worry about what happens to their surfaces. Seriously, this post is fascinating, and gratefully rcvd. If you hadn't answered I was prepared to prod you by pointing-out that even Roderick Spode believed in something, if it was only that his legs, as revealed in short pants, were a manifestation of his destiny to save Western civilization. Fortunately, you and I have slightly more modest aspirations. Peace, -- G

I see that probably I have almost 100% in common with JGL53, but I still claim MY OWN anarchism...yet reach out for those, such as HM, who at least inhabit my planet.

I was never an anarchist though I TRIED to be a libertarian; I've been a conservative (twice), a socialist and finally a liberal which were my antecedents -- my parents were "moderate" Republican types who thought much of Eisenhower as a "beau deal" of prezes but who had voted (religiously) for FDR though admiring Wendell Willkie.

I have been reading lately about Lyndon Johnson, "last" (so far) of the great liberals, and have renewed an admiration of this "flawed giant" (from Robert Dallek's big book, "Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961-1973," published in 1998 which am reading now), and Johnson was never a "black or white" sort.

Personally I dislike the terms "good" and "evil" as bifurcated morality; I believe that all things are "mixed," especially in the human sense and that surely goes for political leaders, say Tito as well as LBJ.

Liberalism is the last refuge for reality as I see it now and if only Obama were as "liberal" as the tea bagged paranoids contend...

> 16

Velly interesting.

Leave out the part about being a socialist and your story is pretty much my story. During one time period I did have several friends wherein they argued for European-style socialism but I could see that could never be America - unless we could develop some unique brand all our own and I could never envision how that could be pragmatically done.

My view of economics (in the real world) is like that of MSMBC dude Lawrence O'Donnell - our system is a mixture of socialism and capitalism and will be for the foreseeable future - the questions are - in which arenas will one predominate and to what degree and why, and so forth.

If a little bit of socialism makes one a socialist then we (Americans) are all socialists, as McDonnell frequently jests.

OK, perhaps not all, but he was referring to those of us who support the continued existence of Social Security, Medicare, and even government programs like OSHA, the Clean Air and Water Acts, the EPA, the FDA, the military, the Transportation Dept., the Energy Dept., National Park Service, at least some form of Welfare and Medicaid, etc. - allowing for some tiny fraction of our population who SAY they are anarchists. I generally view such as either highly confused or as maniacs. I certainly can't imagine they have figured something out that has escaped the vast majority of Americans. lol.

The terms Democrat, progressive, and liberal are not pejorative terms in my lexicon either. The arguments I hear averring they are so are (to me) obviously bogus, i.e., based in false assumption and hyperbole. My first response to them generally is laughter.

Liberalism is all we got in this here polar opposites country to maintain at least a MODICUM of humane governance. I ain't tossin' it away jus' 'cuz it ain't "perfecktion" you betcha...

#17

The idea of 'pure' capitalism ended in the 1850s, with the birth of the railroads.

Since then, ALL western economies have been State-managed, to some extent.

The least of which being the one with the least of rail.

Well "Why I Am NOT a Libertarian" eh...