I really hate how overrated Mozart is. I haven't read enough of HItchens' work to really judge, but if he wrote on the same level that Mozart composed...Well, then I guess he wasn't all that great.
" ... And America is an incarnation of the Third Reich that doesn't even conceal its genocidal methods and aspirations. This is the sum total of what has been learned, by the guru of the left, in the last decade."
- Hitchens on Chomsky, in Slate ("Chomsky's Follies"; May 9, 2011)
"...In short, we do not know who organized the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, or any other related assaults, though it would be a credulous fool who swallowed the (unsupported) word of Osama Bin Laden that his group was the one responsible. An attempt to kidnap or murder an ex-president of the United States (and presumably, by extension, the sitting one) would be as legally justified as the hit on Abbottabad..."
So no, I cannot be a Leftist. To be a Leftist, I would have to be a racist, sexist, avaricious, psychopathic, tyrannical hypocrite. I would have to be a parasitic murderer and lie about it. To be a Leftist, I would have to be devoid of intellect or conscience.
I don't think a decent person can be friends with a real Leftist. That's why Christopher Hitchens is having so much trouble with them. He believed their bullshit, and is now trying to act on it. He cannot be a fascist and lie about it.
What are the scientific advances we can attribute to the Left? Lamarckian theory. Lysenko biology. The AK-47. Techniques for the operation of slave labour camps. Their most innovative ideas involve the most efficient means of disposing of large numbers of corpses.
As opposed to obesity, Leftist nations contend with the problems of starvation - this has much to do with their replacement of the agricultural revolution with communal farming, a feudal throwback.
I don't have the sort of keen intellect that Hitchens does. I certainly haven't seen the Ba'athist goons of Iraq and Syria firsthand, as Hitchens has. But I do not think it takes a sterling intellect to notice that these very Leftist client states of the old Soviet Union were run as feudal fascist autocracies. And I do have firsthand experience with Leftists of the ISO, who once billed Saddam as a champion of literacy and women's rights.
I honestly don't think the Left can be saved, really.
I suppose this is the same problem Hitchens has when he breaks bread with his Leftist brethren. Hitchens is a sincere anti-fascist, and so could not come on board when prominent Leftists were trying to save Ba'athism. He could not buy into the rhetoric of International ANSWER, and his integrity compelled him to say as much. People like Chomsky and Vidal have no integrity, so had a much easier time of it.
Thus why I like Hitchens, and can't abide the two-faced Leftists he is trying to save.
To your first comment,you mustn't compare apples to oranges.To begin with,the failure wasn't wrong military policy but the very decision to interfere with another country's affairs.In nazi germany it was necessary,but there was no holocaust occurring Vietnam.Infact,US trespass into Vietnam said more about America's paranoia about communists than about Vietnam's so-called threat.It was a raw colonialist venture veneered with virtuous phrases about democracy while Chicago police was violating it
@MetrazolElectricity The Holocaust was pending. The liberal democracies knew that, once in power, the Marxists would slaughter millions of people. This is what the Khmer Rouge did - and what Noam CHomsky and fellow Leftists tried to cover up - in the early 1970s. This is what the Vietnamese communists did in Hue in 1968, and to the rest of the country in 1975.
The difference is that the US ended a genocide in Germany, and the Left successfully made one possible in Southeast Asia.
@DrCruel Come come :) you're too intelligent to believe what you've said. Don't get emotional.Loosely speaking a genocide is always possible anywhere. The fact is that after US was defeated and shooed out of Vietnam there was no holocaust.End of debate. You must reconcile with facts.Anyway, Vietnam debate is waste of time,it's like 9/11-inside job debate.It's over for serious people.
@MetrazolElectricity The fact is that after the US left Vietnam there were mass killings of hundreds of thousands of people, and many more South Vietnamese who fled for their lives - some successfully, some not. I am sure you are well aware of the boat people as well. The actual death toll during the subsequent "land reform" program at the hands of the PAVN range from 200,000 to up to one million people. It's hard to get exact figures.
@MetrazolElectricity ( ... mind, there's a bit of deja vu for me, when you try to deny that the Vietnamese communists did what every other communist faction does once it won power. It's just like Noam Chomsky back in 1977, when he likewise tried to argue that the killing fields of Cambodia were just a "Right-wing myth", and that anything bad that might be hapenning there was not due to the Marxists taking power, but rather because the Cambodians had been driven to extremes by US bombings ... )
@DrCruel Chomsky roundly panned fascism whereever he saw it, right/left. It was just that he felt a moral need to account for his own country's faults and these faults,at the time, happened to emerge solely from the right-wing military-minded faction.The muscular right-wing bullies,unable to win debates against him, labelled him a commie bastard bolshevist scum. Whereas, he has always been just a genteel man of scholarship without political power writing truth silently by the dark window.
@MetrazolElectricity Chomsky only panned versions of fascism that were rivals to the brand he supported. He only spoke out against the Khmenr Rouge after their falling out withthe Vietnamese communists - before that point, he was an apologist for them. That's simply the facts.
I label him a linguist because he is a linguist. I label him a hypocritical Leftist hack for similar reasons. The man has no more integrity in terms of his running anti-US political commentary than Lord Haw Haw.
@DrCruel I suggest you go back and read his classic masterpiece of a book 'American Power and the New Mandarins'. You'll find no support of his of any form of fascism. We're talking about a really humble man of peace, emerging from the lower middle-class and standing tall against hideous right-wing puppet-masters with wealth and political muscle and an army of gullible footsoldiers like yourself( with all due respect, sir).Hack is hardly a term you should apply to a superior intellect like his.
@MetrazolElectricity We are talking about a dependable hack, who will do the bidding for his Left fascist paymasters in knocking the US at every turn, in part to feed the prejudices of "useful idiots" such as yourself (not my term; you make take the issue up with Lenin if you like).
"Hack" is at the least the term I should use to describe such a person using his talents, for profit, to forward the agenda of fascists. Indeed, I am being rather kind - in deference to your gentle sensibilities.
What are these imaginary "left fascist paymasters"?He lives on a professor's salary and has the backing of no major political force because he lambasts members of the Left too(he excoriated obama on his wars).Such is his impartiality.That kinda guy the big shots can't handle,so he just does smaller interviews here and there.You won't see him on MSNBC or CNN.Like you,they are frightened of him.Whereas,the right-wing masters who own your thoughts include billionaires like Murdoch,my good friend.
@MetrazolElectricity It took me two minutes to find Noam Chomsky, on CNN, claiming that the US were attacked in NYC and DC because it is an international terrrorist state. It took only a short while to find him in an MSNBC interview hawking another of his books.
I find Chomsky morally bankrupt and useless as a political pundit, and it took me very little time to find him on both CNN and MSNBC. I find it hard to believe a fan of his would be unaware of this.
@DrCruel And there's an interview of him on Charlie Rose too.But my larger point was he is not regularly called upon these shows,because people are scared to hear what he has to say.Whereas other pundits appear frequently. And of course, 9/11 attack was actuated,at least in part, by American foreign policy in various parts of the middle east.It's like the ruthless targeting of civilian buildings of Dresden by the Allies.If the Germans had won,Goebbels would have made it a germanized 9/11 story
@MetrazolElectricity George Galloway is likewise avoided as a pundit on CNN and MSNBC. Would there be a similar "fear" about his views as well?
As for the reasons behind the attacks by al Qaeda against the US, some of the reasons given by Osama bin Laden and his supporters are our tolerance for Jews and the promiscuity of our women. Am I to assume Mr. Chomsky's skewed ideological hatred of the US is more authoritative than the pronouncements of recognized spokesmen for al Qaeda?
See, leaders like Bin Laden,who stock porn,are not motivated by a religious calling but they employ religious overtones to animate the fiery spirit of impressionable young men into hating the US. Israeli occupation of Palestine is one of the juiciest reasons that inspire these plots against Israel's closest ally - USA.It's romanticized myth that scantily clad chicks set in motion terrorist attacks -the sort of drivel that makes for selling news here. "Manufacturing consent" --Dr. Noam Chomsky.
@MetrazolElectricity So in the same way, hypocritical Leftist hacks like Noam Chomsky manipulate impressionable young people in the US to hate their country. Perhaps that's why he's on such friendly terms with Iranian theocrats, despite being a professed atheist.
@DrCruel What do you mean to start with "So" ? haha You use that word when you have created a premise and nourished it with evidence and then gotten ready for a conclusion. All whole numbers are rational numbers. But not vice-versa,remember? Like Bill Maher said, there is no equivalent left-crazy to the real right crazy. Chomsky doesn't hate,he criticizes objectively. The right has the monopoly on hate. I saw your pal Glenn Beck on tv today.He was walking on all fours,covered in chalk-dust
@MetrazolElectricity By the same reasoning, I have been told that Black people cannot be racist - that only White people are racist. So also only men are sexist, according to some feminists. And so on.
Do I have a friend named Glenn Beck? I assume you can nourish this with facts. Or perhaps you have decided to stop pretending to be reasonable, and have decided to turn to personal insults and ridicule to make your points. More of a Ward Churchill strategy, wouldn't you agree?
@DrCruel Who has told you those above things? Take issue with *them*. That's irrelevant to your discussion with me. It's become clear that your reductionist stance makes you clump everyone whom you don't agree with in one category. In your eyes, if person A thinks gov. stimulus will boost the economy thru increased aggregate demand,then A is a black panther jewish communist homosexual atheistic feminist from san fran. Allay my fears and prove that that's not the case, my friend.
@MetrazolElectricity Pardon. You cannot be insulting, rude and obnoxious to me, you cannot accuse me of all sorts of thought crimes, you cannot claim that I base my assertions on suppositions and no evidence, even as you make unsubstantiated suppositions of an insulting nature against me - and then call me "friend". Not with a straight face, in any event.
In any event, I rather like Jews. My sort supports the existence of Israel, remember? It's Chomsky and his lot that backs Hezbollah.
@MetrazolElectricity ( ... incidentally, a discussion about Keynesian economics would be something other than what we're doing. The issue is subtle - in our present case, whether Keynesian rules apply when the problem isn't a lack of available or affordable capital but rather a culture of kleptocratic neo-socialist feudalism.
But we cannot have that discussion, as you've already decided I'm a stereotypical "reductionist". Frankly your own Left fascist leanings don't much impress me either.)
@DrCruel It wasn't an insult.See this is what I speak about. Criticism is taken so personally by the Right. Don't be so emotional. An angry man is a bungling polemicist. This is witnessed by your misguided connection between Chomsky and Hez. He doesn't pan Israel out of love of Hez but out of his capacity of a long-standing proponent of freedom and anti-colonialism. And yes, man, I'm a leftist fascist(oxymoron?), I'm actually writing from the grave of Stalin LOL
You're support for known Left fascists like Chomsky and Vidal is obscene, and reveals a serious lack of moral character. Your repeated accusation that those who disagree with you are "Rightists" and not worthy of regard or respect demonstrated either a willful ignorance or a dedication to deceive. That you refuse to acknowledge these faults means your chances of improvement are dismal.
But I still think you're a nice guy. No offense. Just trying to help.
@DrCruel Come on, you've proven yourself to be an intelligent guy so why are you letting your charged up emotions stultify your otherwise keen intellect? Consider those left-leaning pacifist kids were singing peace songs in Chicago in 1968,would you call that fascism? Fascism implies authoritarianism and nationalism,both concepts are antithetical to the leftist code.&,people who disagree with me politically are often my good friends.My best friend is dyed in the wool republican right-winger
@MetrazolElectricity What's this? From your direction, this passes for constructive criticism. Why does it suddenly transform into an emotional outburst when you're on the receiving end?
For concepts that are "antithetical" to the Leftist code (is this the same code that criminalizes property owners and those involved in commerce, and calls for their "liquidation" as a class?), there does seem to be an awful lot of authoritarianism and nationalism in Leftist states. Odd that.
@MetrazolElectricity ( ... and how am I supposed to swallow this "singing" nonsense? Did no bombings and burning of buildings take place? Were no US soldiers spit upon on their return from Vietnam, as my uncle and many others were? And why did these protestors suddenly lose interest in Indochina, just as the Khmer Rouge opened up their killing fields and the Vietnamese communists began exterminating the Hmong?
Honestly. I want to be kind, but how else am I to respond to your obscene deceits?)
@DrCruel This should appear to you as elementary(I don't know why it hasn't already),there is a cardinal difference between the so-called left-leaning pacifist hippies of the 60s and the authoritarian govs. of the soviet union.An operative,ideological and cultural difference. This should be apparent to the naked eye.To amalgamate them into one group is intentional myopia of the kind employed by the insecure polemicist stripped of facts and driven into the corner...Play honestly, my friend
@MetrazolElectricity Perhaps there is a substantial difference between the Nazis and the Cliveden set, or between Bolsheviks and their effete apologists in the West - the latter amongst which the likes of Gore Vidal would have felt entirely comfortable with. Certainly Nancy Astor never gassed a Jew to death, nor did Beatrice Webb ever beat a Ukrainian farmer's head in with a brick. But why should I feel kindly to the snide, condescending apologists of such inhuman outrages?
@DrCruel I'm glad you brought up the Nazis because if I were to draw parallels between the iconic right-wing menace: Adolf Hitler and say, Tom Wolfe or WFB , that would be just as sloppy as your comparison of peaceful protesters like the Chicago pacifists or Noam Chomsky. Even though Hitler and his Nazis are the cornerstone of right-wing villainy, it would be unfair to say you are a crypto-nazi. Infact, as Bill Maher said, Stalin and alike so authoritarian, they are really just right-wing.
@MetrazolElectricity And yet I've been accused of as much. It is as unfair as calling a noted socialist like Hitler a "right winger" - as if the Nazi movement had as its objective the return of the Hollerzollern kaizer to power.
And again, the Leftists stumping for the NVA were hardly "pacifists", and were not shy about using crime and terrorism to achieve their goals. As for Chomsky's connection to Hezbollah, that's his own fault - similar to Galloway's "indefatiguability" speech.
@DrCruel I doubt any proof can be provided that shows that the hippies as a movement applied violent means to support the NVA. Not even dummy right-wingers of say john birch society back then claimed this much.
As for Hitler, LOL you're joking right? Come on. Let's be serious, no bogus conspiracy stories here, sir.
@MetrazolElectricity Yeah, I've heard this revisionist bullshit before. There's even a Leftist that wrote a book, claiming that US soldiers who said they were spit upon were lying, and that the whole thing was a "Right wing" myth. And of course there were no such people as William Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn and Angela Davis.
And no, I'm not joking about Hitler being a socialist. Are you serious when you praise noted Left fascists? Are you really that morally corrupt, or just pulling my leg?
@DrCruel Like I said, my friend, leftist fascist is an oxymoron. You're being hoodwinked by FOX news soundbites. And to say that Hitler's a socialist is the silliest thing ever. He drove out the communists and socialists out of germany when he came to power. He was a nationalist of the most right-wing variety. You do realize that world consensus is against your minority view ? Go to any history professor , say hitler was a socialist and he will throw you out of his office for wasting his time
@MetrazolElectricity Like I said, you're clearly not my friend. And in the modern sense, calling someone a Left fascist is frequently redundant.
Claiming that people like Chomsky and Vidal are on some moral pinnacle is not silly - it's obscene. Claiming that the architect of the National Socialist movement is a socialist is not "silly" either - it's obvious.
Bolsheviksmurdered members of rival Left wing movements in their day. Bolsheviks even murdered each other. That's what Leftists do.
@DrCruel In the modern sense or the FOX news hackneyed right-wing propagandist sense? Chomsky is morally impeccable. Vidal's a kick-ass critic who slays fools in his capacity as a man of letters. The consensus in the academic world is that Hitler was right-wing nationalist. So, did you take history lessons from Dr. David Duke at his Ku Klux Kollege?LOL And I think it's imperative to the salvation of this country for right-wingers to be offended. Truth, being liberal, will offend them.
@MetrazolElectricity Chomsky is morally impeccable in the way that Joseph Goebbels was morally impeccable. Both were willing to do whatever they could to aid their particular brand of socialism. As for Vidal, he's a self-promoting crackpot. His "insights" on Timothy McVeigh and the WTC attacks are particularly nutty.
That Nazism was the end state of capitalism is only accepted by Marxists.
As for your repeated reference to me being a "right winger" or Klansman, fuck you too. No offense.
@DrCruel Neither Chomsky nor Goebbels was a socialist. J.G. was right-wing nationalist who popularized the Big Lie propaganda technique, now adopted by the right-wing american media, and which Chomsky constantly tries to expose thru his speeches like the one about Manufacturing Consent. So actually,as just shown,they are opposites and Goebbels in your boy. And of course, you're a right-winger, just admit it. Why don't you? You think it's something to be ashamed of? Well, it is.
@MetrazolElectricity You should also say Edward Bernays was behind the "Big Lie" strategy. That's another popular "big lie" amongst Left-wing apologists.
There is no "right wing". There is a Leftist criminal cabal, and then their are targets and victims of that mafia. But there is no defining element common to all within this so-called "right wing" other than that the mainstream Left is antagonistic towards them. Thus how Israelis in a kibbutz can be deemed to be part of this "right wing".
@MetrazolElectricity The confusion you seem to have (or perhaps, seek to perpetuate) is the dissonance between what Leftists say they are and what Leftists actually do. Leftists traditionally are bombastic, pompous racist sociopaths, who have no regard for other people and who consider the general public to be a sort of cattle. Mussolini is a good example of one, as is Trotsky. And of course Chomsky and Goebbels fit the category also.
@DrCruel haha Mussolini and Hitler are poster boys of the right-wing.Every serious person,even thinking right-wingers, know this. There really isn't any axiomatic leftist position because so-called leftists generally find themselves helping the poor, saving the environment, eating healthy organic food,being scientifically innovative, fighting for civil rights, doing yoga and exercise and other diverse positive things that bring laughter and sunshine. It's very flexible, liberal and heartwarming.
@MetrazolElectricity There is the Left, and there are victims and targets of the Left. There's no organized antithesis to Leftists, no more than there is an organized ideological antithesis to pirates. Leftists, at least in teh modern sense, derive their economic justification through violent thievery, most often through successful sedition. They don't stand for anything more lofty than that.
@DrCruel Contd. And now for the Right-wing ,aka Mordor, well, we have homophobic, coca-cola-drinking, macdonalds eating, bible thumping, gun touting, red sweating, angry , unhygienic, anti-evolution and anti-science, anti-choice, secession-minded, xenophobic, anti-union, fat, FOX news watching, global-warming-denying, anti-intelligentsia, beer-belly, ugly racists.
@MetrazolElectricity King Fidel jails homosexuals. Bolsheviks killed the Ukranians because of their ethnicity. While the Leftists were cheering the Vietnamese communists on, tehy were exterminating the Hmong. There is a virtually endless litany of Leftists crimes, and a death toll of 100 million and climbing.
To top global crime with hypocrisy, Leftists then accuse their victims of Leftist crimes. Isn't that brilliant?
One would be hard put to come up with a historical movement more destructive to society than Leftism. One would have trouble finding a political faction more keenly intent on the property, earnings and wealth of others. And the Leftist God is a jealous God ... anyone holding to alternate beliefs is harassed, attacked and - if Leftists have an opportunity to do so - murdered in the night.
If there is a means to tyranny more vile, more intent on the demeaning of humanity, I cannot name it.
@DrCruel I think everyone should note what you've done.You've taken a few stale and feeble examples from the dead past, embellished, amplified and presented them as the entire history of the left.If I played tht game,I'd include Adolf Hitler and George Wallace in the current right-wing's design.Truth is, I don't play weak-minded games like that. The present reveals that right-wingers are uneducated jingoist jesus-freaks, while so-called leftists are scientifically-inclined, healthy intellectuals
@MetrazolElectricity To be fair to the American Left, they aren't normally murderous bastards. Even crazies like William Ayers end up "selling out" for a steady paycheck. Leftists in the US are more interested in co-opting the government and looting the treasury than they are in bringing the whole structure down. They might stump for Left fascists, but most can't bother themselves with any actual hands-on killing.
Thus the term "limousine Leftists". You can smell the hypocrisy.
@DrCruel Ah-ha! So now you are retracting from your previously made generalization about leftists being these blood-thirsty fascist hooligans. Now you're willing to concede that some don't do hands-on killing. Trust me, buddy, 10 more days, and you'll be singing that the leftists are the salt of the earth.Truth always wins. Btw, leftists have huge presence in academy,including sociology.I see you've stuck closely to your right-wing klansman racism, judging by the scorn towards "third world".Nice
@MetrazolElectricity Not at all. I'm claiming that their American cousins tend to restrain their natural impulses, I would say on two grounds. The first is cowardice, whereas the second is greed. Leftists are treated inordinately well in this so-called "capitalist atrocity" of a nation, and many of them are very wealthy. They do not want anything to disturb their stock portfolios or state benefit plans.
It is, for example, why Chomsky sought tenure at a state college. So also Angela Davis.
@MetrazolElectricity American Leftists aren't nearly as manic as their overseas brethren. Most Leftists in the West content themselves with scaring up environmental scams and profiting from the chaos. Only the global warming swindle comes close to other brilliant Leftist ideas like eugenics and Lysenko biology.
Science? To Leftists, it's just another opportunity for scams. The people they berate traditionally are in the hard sciences. Leftists tend to like sociology and "Third World Studies".
@MetrazolElectricity I use my words carefully. Leftists like to expropriate things that do not belong to them, not the least of which are words. For example, "progressive" and "liberal" have nothing to do with their regressive, autocratic ideology or the particulars of Leftist governance.
No sir. I am a liberal. The proper term is "limousine Leftist". And again, in response to another unjustified personal insult directed against me, screw you too.
@DrCruel You use your words thoughtlessly, pal. Admit it, you made up "limousine leftist" and now you're embarrassed because I know your concoction is a dim-witted corruption of a popular term. Prof. Chomsky teaches at MIT because it has become home to him over the decades, it is after all a great place for linguistics and other science. Right-wingers won't be caught near a technical univ. like that. Lastly, If you're a liberal then your buddy Glenn Beck is Mahatma Gandhi's Second Coming! LOL
@MetrazolElectricity No, I'm very careful with them. And I'm not your "pal". I think we've been over this ground before.
I should like to claim to have invented the term, as it is a necessary one. But simply googling the phrase will demonstrate that this isn't the case. Since I'm not a habitual liar (one among many reasons that I'm not a Leftist myself), I really can't affirm your kind accusation.
@MetrazolElectricity In regards Chomsky, he has his position based on his accomplishments as a language scientist, particularly in the field of parsing. He's not a particularly decent person, and his skills in language have made it easier for him to lie effectively.
My issue is if the US has an evil and fascist government, why is Chomsky so keen on working for it? He could just as well be a linguist in Cuba or Syria - nations which he seems to have a much higher opinion of. Why the hypocrisy?
@DrCruel No hypocrisy. It's a matter of habit. He grew up here. See, you can criticize the vile corrupt serpentine media and system of governance of a nation like US and still appreciate the fine educational institutions we have here. Our universities are a sanctuaries for intelligent and compassionate souls like Chomsky... outside which lie the barbaric right-wing animals roaming the streets like rabid dogs holding a bible in one hand and a gun in another hand braying about bloody patriotism
@MetrazolElectricity Oh come now. MIT is an institution involved in the creation and perfection of military hardware for a regime and system of government Chomsky implies is no better than Nazism. Could he find no better work than to be employed by the very government he ceaselessly vilifies, at an institution instrumental in making the US military the most powerful in the world?
He's gotten rich at it too, I might add. Chomsky's appearances on the lecture circuit aren't cheap.
@MetrazolElectricity ( ... or perhaps you're conceding that Chomsky's hypocritical Left fascism is a matter of habit. That would be an amusing claim, although I'd still have to disagree - Chomsky's unceasing bile against the US government and sideways support for outrageously oppressive factions allied with the Left aren't made of simple lies, but are instead very well crafted campaigns of deceit.
This isn't something he does out of obsession. He's paid quite well for it.)
@DrCruel If wealth was what Chomsky sought, he could have sold out, gone mainstream, compromised his values and made piles of cash by becoming an apostate and then an apologist for an evil empire. You're telling me he makes more dough than baloney-brained right winger propaganda artists like glenn beck do? LOL. He's lives a surprisingly spartan life for a man of his talents. If you combined the IQ of the entire staff of FOX news it wouldn't compare to Chomsky's. The man is leagues above you all
@MetrazolElectricity Chomsky did "sell out", went mainstream Leftist, and made piles of cash by first promoting the interests of the Soviet Union, then the post-Marxist Left in the West. The man is a multi-millionaire and a stockholder.
He's up there with Ward Churchill and George Galloway as a political pundit, a shameless apologist for the mainstream Left. I don't see how FOX News or any other similarly legitimate news service can be compared with his self-interested anti-US diatribes.
@DrCruel First, there is no mainstream left and what piles are you talking about. Have you ever seen Chomsky? He has a most austere presence. This is in stark contrast to your Tom Wolfe who always travels with a line of immaculately pressed, pretentious white suits. And that quote of Hitchens' tells more about Hitch than about Chomsky. It is clear that he's sold out, or the cancer has so debilitated his reasoning that he can't think straight.
@MetrazolElectricity Yes there is a mainstream Left, it is extremely rich and hypocritically exploitative, and the "piles" I'm talking about is the lucrative bullshit of the Leftist elite.
I don't have a "Tom Wolfe". What has he to do with Chomsky's hypocrisy? If I claim the Titanic has sunk, can you claim it hasn't because the Andrea Doria sank? What are you on about?
And if telling the truth is what you call "selling out", I can now see why you have such a high opinion of Chomsky.
@DrCruel Subjective qualities such as level of ostentatious presentation are best measured through a methodology of comparison. Thus, it's more relevant to note the snobbish attire of right-wing "intellectual" Tom Wolfe when talking about Chomsky's relative austerity in presence. Got it? Now, I suggest you spend a day watching the many videos of Chomsky in which he unwaveringly answers the truth about American policies,while, hitch's videos are primarily about the trite topic of religion
@MetrazolElectricity George Washington wore a wig and had dentures made from irory and gold. Julius Caesar wore a red cape in battle. Alexander had a horse he named Bucephalus. None of this speaks to the ongoing diatribe of hypocrisy and lies that emanates from Chomsky's verbal and written works on politics. From his stumping for the Khmer Rouge to his support for Hezbollah, Chomsky (and many of his fans) has always been on the side of the fascists.
@DrCruel I'm sorry anything not overt eludes your imagination. Let me explain again. You claimed that Chomsky became filthy rich by misusing his talents. Well, I proved that Chomsky isn't your private-jet traveling mogul (trump) or a bungling pretentious general who struck gold (washington) or the republican-turned-dictator (caesar). These gilded names are just that -gilded names. Chomsky is the real deal and that leaves right-wingers many distraught. And you guys should be.
Chomsky has millions of dollars in assets. He invests in stocks while claiming that capitalism is fascism. He worked for the Pentagon while claiming that the Pentagon was a representation of American Nazism. Whether or not Tom Wolfe wears a fancy suit does not change the fact that Chomsky is a hypocrite.
It is because of people like him that I'm not a Leftist. Too bad you aren't decent or sane enough to see through him.
@DrCruel So what? I have friends who own millions of dollars in assets and their talents and values aren't particularly noteworthy. I personally think your focus on Chomsky's assets is an unimaginative evasion. He has never come on for a blanket ban on all capitalism activities. He's never claimed to be an authority on economics. It's just boring right-wing cowardice to run away from the topic of foreign policy and charge Chomsky of being anti-capitalist. What's next ? Chomsky is a queer jew?
@MetrazolElectricity So in other words, you're saying that just because he's a hypocrite is no reason not to ascribe to his views religiously. And you're so upset about me saying something bad about your ridiculous hypocritical "prophet" that you're going to accuse me of racism and homophobia.
Perhaps if you used a few more dodges I'd be led off track. Try calling me your buddy again, that might work.
@DrCruel I think it's been well-established that the ring-wing is a humorless,self-righteous,self-hating, self-pitying bitter racist homophobic territory in the political spectrum.You've shown yourself to embody all these qualities, especially,self-hatred by denying the friendship of a superior intellect as that of yours truly ;) The reason WFB was respected by some in the left, was because he was shrewd enough to act with less overt bellicosity,a tactic lost on a glenn beck-enthusiast like you.
@MetrazolElectricity What "right wing"? Monarchists? The bourgeoisie? Christians? Socialists who have run afoul of the mainstream Left? "Little Eichmann" stockbrokers? Fans of "professional" wrestling? Libertarians? Who are these people of which you speak?
Are the "humorless" the people you insult and ridicule? Are the "self-righteous" the people who point out the stupid assertions of Leftists? Are the "self-pitying" those workers that complain about taxes?
@DrCruel Yes, I like Jon Stewart's formula of using derision to annihilate the hideous and stupid monster that is the right-winger. Ridicule is roundly deserved by the blood-thirsty right-wing. And the people who oppose taxes are uneducated in basic economics and should have their vote nullified due to their nescience (a proposal WFB supported in the 60s). Watch Chomsky's withering remarks on the passing of WFB,he still remembers how he slayed the right-winger with ideas and not intimidation
@MetrazolElectricity Of course you prefer derision as opposed to facts or rational arguments. You've said as much throughout, both with your choice of Left fascists as personal heroes, insults and innuendo for everyone else, and your own personal conversational mix of arrogance, condescension and obtuse stupidity. I expect you'd be a fan of Ward Churchill as well.
But you haven't answered my question. What is this supposed "right wing" you speak of? Is it another imagined enemy of yours?
@MetrazolElectricity Certainly you have no sympathy for the peasants forced to fund the Leftist aristocracy's indulgent excesses. I would expect no less from a Leftist fanatic. Less clear is how you'd "motivate" those workers the Left have betrayed, once they've been disenfranchised and have decided that slaving away so a Leftist like Ted Kennedy can maintain his yacht, or Barney Frank can fund a brothel at his home, isn't worth the effort.
@DrCruel Peasants? Look at the antiquated elitist right-wing way you're calling regular folks. Nobody uses words like peasants anymore, mi'lord . These guys Ted and Barney have been great champions of the common man and at the end of the day don't they have the right to a few indulgences for their sacrificial public service. Oh,by the right-wing I mean crackpots like the tea party, KKK, neo-nazi party,john birch society,you,GOP, NRA, etc etc etc! These aren't imaginary entities. Wish they were.
@MetrazolElectricity There is no "Right wing" outside of Marxian myth. The words used by Marxists for the general public are "masses" or "cattle", which I find very offensive - my use of the term "peasant" was meant as a kindness, clearly undeserved in retrospect, in response to your radical, cruel and absurd ideological sensibilities.
And again, what has a libertarian movement of anti-tax advocates to do with radical Jew-hating socialists? Or a movement dedicated to the antebellum South?
@DrCruel I just recited to you a handful of right-wing crazy organizations.This anti-tax stink you're making is a bogus charade. These animals don't know an iota about economics, all they desire and ,I'm sorry to say you seem to be part of this group, is right-wing maniacal devilry in which minorities are hung from trees, modern government and law is dismantled and a return is made to the primitive tribal race-based form of regression in which science, taxes and other man-made devices are killed
@MetrazolElectricity No - you recited to me a list of organizations which you claim are "right wing", none of which are particularly related to any of the others. One in particular - the Nazis - were a decidely socialist, Left-wing faction. One - the KKK - was most closely associated with the Democrats, not the GOP. As for the NRA, it's a lobby group that wants to preserve the Second Amendment.
The ACLU wants to preserve the First Amendment. Is it a "rightist" group as well?
@MetrazolElectricity The sort of people who refer to the general public as "animals" are Leftists. They are the ones most noted for being flagrant racists, and are most notorious for the ethnic genocides of the 20th century - all perpetrated by Leftist factions of one stripe or another.
If you aren't a racist yourself, why proudly proclaim your association with such a racist sect of ideologues? As for anti-science Ludditism, are you talking about environmentalists? Are they "rightist" too?
@DrCruel Thankfully the general public is not fully right-wing, although you would like to have that way. Right-wingers in my judgement are racist animals. You guys want to poison children's brains with creationism and then take them behind the altar and fuck them. It is true that large segments of the right-wing are child-molesters because they are social-failures who overcompensate with guns and religion. I pity you right-wingers. You didn't have a chance from the day you were born, dude..sad
@MetrazolElectricity You should be thankful enough of the public is gullible enough to tolerate the left's thievery and violence. If they put up a united front, as they did in Singapore, there'd be no place for Leftists to hide - let alone prosper like parasites at the expense of taxpayers they clearly despise.
But aren't you saying we should be thankful for piracy? Since Leftists are racists, aren't you also being thankful that a segment of the population are habitual liars as well?
@DrCruel the general public is the left. you crazies are the loud-mouth outliers.your religious nutjob ideology of hatred towards gays and minorities isn't worth two nickels.Go pat your lonely back with a few hackneyed expressions.No thinking person is interested in your Klan talk.Just cause Chomsky fucked your grandma in '67, you're whining now.Get over it and return to the woods and burn your crosses, you illiterate village idiot. Inbred cialis-popping sister-fucking redneck scum.
@MetrazolElectricity The general public is in the Tea Party. Left fascists like you call them "teabaggers" and accuse them from everything from religious fanaticism to racism.
Mind, I'm not in the Tea Party. I don't think you can chase off Leftist pirates simply by organizing voting rallies and telling them to "shoo". People are going to have to get much more serious about them, because Leftists are more than happy to use violence to get at our money,
@DrCruel Even mainstream republiklansmen consider teabaggers a fringe right-wing anti-black violent hate group. So I don't know what the fuck you're talking about, Eichmann. And tell me when leftists used violence in US in a major way? Those brethren of yours who were bombing black churches in the south were assuredly anti-communist right wing scum. Heck, you crazy bastards killed Kennedy when he was in the South. You've shown your hate colors to me long time ago, my dear right-wing imp.
@MetrazolElectricity If what you mean by "mainstream republiklansmen" is Janeanne Garofalo, you'd be closer to the mark. Given your degenerating state of lunacy (palatable even as we pass our messages), that might very well be your perception.
As for me "not knowing the fuck" or the like, you seem intent on continuing our little exchange regardless. Curious that.
@DrCruel You've been boring me with your crackpot conspiracy theories and right-wing second-hand demagogy for days now. By republiklansmen, I mean your GOP party, the party of hitler-enthusiasts. Teabaggers like you come and go, son. Lost in the hatred of Chomsky's truths and embarrassment over your failing intellect, there is a little child pretending to be Dr Cruel...PhD in right-wing anal-buggery. Don't bore me with your drivel,go out and distribute pamphlets supporting intelligent design
@MetrazolElectricity Again, in the face of so-called "boredom" you have an odd reaction. It seems more like the truth that you've been chastened for championing Left wing fascists as your heroes, and have become very ill-tempered because of it.
Scratch a Leftist, and the hatred and racism will come flowing out of the wound. Your last homophobic posting is a perfect case in point.
@DrCruel haha Where's the racism, klanboy? Homophobic posting. I've got friends who are gay. Heck, isn't your side that believes in the Leviticus Bible bullshit and wants to strip gay people of their rights? lol, and you spoke of hypocrisy. Fucking right-wing illiterate tool of the sewers.
@MetrazolElectricity Add to characteristics of leftists the tendency to bald-faced lies and denials, even when caught in the act.
At least you've been careful to keep out homophobic references this time around, sticking to scatalogical insults. I suppose that's an improvement. Maybe I've had a positive impact on you.
@DrCruel Just show me what act you've caught me in, David Duke? haha Like your master Glenn Beck, you're just words, my little right-wing imp. You haven't been thinking straight recently have you? Too much moonshine at the last Cross-burning, klanboy? Teabaggers, like you, love to cry foul about leftists. I've see a thousand guys, talk just like you, act just like you, man. You're an intellectual lightweight anti-university, anti-science, anti-global warming, anti-evolution, jesus-freak bigot.
@DrCruel Oh yeah? Just quote me, you right-wing cocksucker ... haha You're just prattle, no evidence no proof... that's why you're a religious nutjob. You don't value evidence at all. You're a complete republiklan village idiot. And me like Gore and Prof. Chomsky? Wow, You flatter me,my right-wing simpleton.
@MetrazolElectricity So your idea then is to have a Leftist leader shoot people, then claim well after the fact that he represented "Rightist reactionaries" all along. I suspect it will take no more than a generation to make popular the idea that Stalin was a "Rightist" and even a "state capitalist" also.
@MetrazolElectricity As for William Buckley, he was ceaselessly mocked by members of our Hollywood version of the Cliveden set - not the least because he so keenly got at the root of Left's hypocrisy and ideological idiocy. He offered to punch Chomsky in the nose at one point - probably the best answer such a Leftist hypocrite really deserves - but instead finally decided to let Chomsky make a fool of himself on Buckley's show.
And why should I be a fan of Glenn Beck? Is he that good?
@DrCruel Bullshit. Buckley was making a joke - a reference to the fact that he once said to gore vidal "now listen you queer, stopp calling me a crypto nazi or i punch you in your goddamn face!"chomsky didn't make a fool of himself at all,but while reading all this comments (from left and right)i don't get the feeling that anyone wants sirious discussion.maybe its part of the USA that black and white thinking is much more present than in europe. Fuck Hitchens/Fuck CHomsky is all thats being said
@janjanjan0 I don't think Buckley had much respect for either man. Or so my reading of the National Review would lead me to believe.
Don't be shy. There are at least as many Left-wing nitwits in Europe as there are in the US. Just go to any coffeehouse in Athens. We seem to be better at avoiding riots in our streets these days too.
@MetrazolElectricity ( ... incidentally, in those history course I have taken in college I've gotten As. I have voiced exactly that asserrtion to my professors, without any negative comment on their part.
I don't mean to be rude, but you seem to be an extremely ignorant person, perhaps because you listen too much to people like Vidal and Chomsky. Maybe you should stay away from ZMag and try some real news sources, like The Economist. Then you might not offend people like me so much.)
To my knowledge, Hitchens has never gotten into a brawl with someone just because he panned his book. Mailer was an insufferable, arrogant bore - and apparently an abusive alcoholic as well.
I don't slander the Left. I tell the truth about them. I tell the truth about sycophantic so-called "liberals" as well. Indeed, I'd put Gore Vidal up there with that Left fascist, "you don't have a right to live" George Bernard Shaw.
Academic types are the problem, Hitchens has lived the realities of life and therefore talks with real life authority, some things you can't truly understand unless you live through them, no matter how intellegent you are.
Chris is being kind. His father was a far more superior writer and polemicist than hitchens. I mean William Buckley in his prime would chew out this leftist drunkard.
@boxingaddict25 haha swearing - the height of hitchhead eloquence. bill buckley has emasculated heavyweight intellectuals like gore vidal and norman mailer, these are pulitzer prize winners(mailer) and writers of epics. compared to them, our drunk little vanity fair columnist with a collection of 10-page books and a small following among a few non-academic young people is the definition of zero. Hitchens - the Glenn Beck of the Left.
@SexxyB3ast You speak with characteristic hitchhead ignorance and pride. I can understand that in this day of stupidity where american school are producing subpar intellects, it's easy for a generally youngish rebellious punk to be drawn to a purportedly clever man. I've read a few of hitch's books, lightweight airplane material. His oratory style is theatrical. He's a good entertainer.No able professor or academican takes him seriously though. Like I said, he's fodder for the non-academic types
@MetrazolElectricity As one who're not of an American school, nor a random "youngish rebellious punk", I would say you should put away your synonym book and come up with contra arguments to which of Hitchens' points you're disagreeing with. I've never met a professor or real academic who would even consider posting such blatant stupidity about Hitchens, as your post. You seem to be like a product of a Pat Robenson "school". You can compose a sentence, but the arguments just aren't present.
@ulkien I wasn't invited to present arguments yet,sir. To begin with we have here a boozer, a brain that's too flooded with johannie walker black to be speaking about the same reality that the rest of humanity shares. In hitch's world maybe going after a shriveled old nun who worked in fly-infested allies of calcutta with the poor is an anathema, but for men who draw their strength from non-alcoholic resources, we find charity and benevolence a virtue.
@MetrazolElectricity You obviously don't know the full story of Mother Theresa. She was a user of the poor to help raise money, millions, to build new institutions in her own name, where the poor continued to "live" in an environment no one in the west would tolerate. She was against the empowerment of women, and felt that birth control was one of the world's greatest evils. She was ridiculous, and thank goodness for people like Mr. Hitchens who aren't afraid to reveal unpleasant truths.
@scudder99 Like anyone else, Mother T had her foibles. But to suggest something Machiavellian was up her sleeves is bit of a fantasy. You shouldn't be so gullible in believing these conspiracy theories. Even if hitchens can point to certain associations of her which may have been questionable, I doubt hitch can prove a motive. There's a reason the mainstream believes that NASA landed men on the moon ,while only the fringe cries foul-play. Same with the marginalized Mother T slanderers.
@MetrazolElectricity This is no conspiracy theory. These are simply facts. Foibles? These are deep character flaws that, because of an association with a religion, are marginalized. By all means, hitch your star to HER wagon.
@scudder99 You're missing the forest for the trees. There exists an overwhelming reservoir of facts that cast Mother T in the most saintly(metaphor,calm down) light.
@scudder99 Is that why hitch generally has not won over the academia ? Why is it that usually bonafide scholarly men and professors aren't bewitched by hitch the way young internet atheists and readers of vanity fair are? Here's one reason why : The man's notorious for poor citation and bad references. It's like saying the Glenn Beck show is a well-documented news show,and not an opinion show...Think.
@MetrazolElectricity I would disagree. Most Leftist academians are notorious hypocrites, and tend to read their ideas and stances off the same cheat sheet. Professors who don't follow along tend to get abused in the faculty lounge.
But Hitchens has his own mind. He takes his views from his own thoughts, and not from the revealed truth of others - not even from such a venerated figure of religious adoration as Karl Marx. This makes him someone these Leftist academian philistines can't swallow.
@DrCruel To begin with, most members of the academy are ,what say Glenn Beck would call, leftists. So the minority of right-wing academicians usually specialize in civil war studies& suchlike. Now, Karl Marx has been vastly demonized by the media, he never revealed a blueprint for society;Das Kapital was an honest critique of capitalism. Conversely,however, nobody adores Marx as a religious figure,it's not:Marx came down from a mountain holding a tablet bearing the communist manifesto contd.
@MetrazolElectricity Most non-Leftists (I don't think there is a coherent uniform class of "right wing" that opposes this cabal) tend to stick with the hard sciences - physics, mathematics and the like. But there are Leftists represented here too. I think this has much to do with how unscrupulous Leftists can be about seizing and maintaining their power and authority. The unions don't help either.
I am familiar with the academic world. Karl Marx is a god-like figure to these people.
@DrCruel I feel this is in sharp contrast with reality. In my experience and reading, members of hard sciences such as those favoring stem cell research, people like Stephen Hawking etc, tend to be grounded in liberal philosophy.Do you think Prof. Dawkins would vote republican? Right-wingers are,like I said, generally absent from academy altogether. They go into Bible stuff etc. I've met marxist economics professors, they don't really think of Marx as a god. In fact..contd.
@DrCruel Contd. Karl Marx said that religion is an opiate of the masses. He was atheist and most of his admirers tend to be atheistic. So I guess that's the final nail in the coffin of that strange hypothesis of yours. Unless you were using god/religion poetically, then by the same token, followers of hitchens or glenn beck tend to be stubborn,recalcitrant and religious too.Lastly,Chomsky is a much braver spokesman of the unbridled truth than Hitchens is. Anyway, off to watch a movie. TC
@MetrazolElectricity Yes, I know. I'm claiming that Leftists are, amongst many other very nasty things, hypocrites. It's the same sense of self-righteous obnoxious fervor that has them imposing despotic self-serving autocracies in the name of universal equality and freedom.
As for Chomsky, he's an amoral Leftist jerk that lies creatively to make money. He say some smart thing about parsing though.
@DrCruel I agree with you,there are a few nasty leftists,but they are generally more genial, less bellicose and more rational minded individuals than their counterparts on the right. Right-wingers fear and hate science, berate the academy, place their faith in guns and religion and are generally bigoted nationalists. Now not all are this way, for instance, I'm sure you're a decent and smart fellow.And Prof.Chomsky's considered a fearless moral authority on american foreign policy.A real Hero.
@MetrazolElectricity I don't know about these "right wingers", whatever they are. But those people vilified by the Left and lumped together on "the Right" that I know tend to be involved in hard sciences or mathematics. It's liberals and Leftsts I've found studying sociology, "Third World Solidarity Studies", the theatre, and so on.
Chomsky's only considered a "heroic figure" by Leftists. His "heroism" nets him a comfortable living in speakers fees. He's hardly suffering for his hypocrisy.
@DrCruel You must admit you're saying all this with some cheek. I mean, we know for a fact that members of the academy,including hard science and sociology, tend to be leftists in general.I can think of several such scientists on the left, not even a single one on the right.Why,last week I was having beer with a group of programming geniuses,all liberal.But turn on fox and you'll see these right-wingers that have eluded you.Heck,your tea party klan is consists of these people. Contd.
@DrCruel Contd. Look at the anti-abortion, anti-evolution racist rednecks that comprise the right.I mean these people are nuts.Besides,I suspect after a certain level of intelligence,a man just cannot be definition be conservative or religious.The right-wing illusions suffice usually for lower IQ people.This is what I've noticed. Lastly, Chomsky, as Hitchens pointed out elsewhere,has been persecuted for his views and critiques by the large right-wing media.Still fights on, that's a real hero.
@MetrazolElectricity It depends on which "Right" you're talking about. You appear to characterize them with with a racial epithet, even as you accuse them of racism. But what of libertarian atheists? Free market entrepreneurs? Would you claim Richard Cheney is a "racist redneck" with a straight face?
As for what Hitchens has to say on Chomsky, I can cite a few choice articles of my own, especially recently. Hitch doesn't say nice things about that despicable charlatan. Shall I find them?
@DrCruel If it hadn't been for Chomsky, who effectively introduced heavy-weight intellectual and moral discourse regarding american politics, then there wouldn't be a successful Hitchens. Redneck is a racial epithet? Oddball. Anyway, these few so-called "libertarian" atheists like tom wolf are the exception,not the rule.Everyone knows this.The avg. conservative can't read the bible he loves,forget Hayek's pseduo-economics. We're talking about low-life gun-touting modern-day klansmen here,friend.
@MetrazolElectricity What "heavy weight' would that be? He is a tireless critic of the US -whether they are at fault or not - and can be counted on always to parrot the views of the mainstream Left on everything. He has literally taken about-faces on issues, then denies he has done so in spite of his own written record. I have no trust in his commentary, and no respect for his worldview.
And yes, "redneck" is a racial epithet, much like "wetback". It is obviously so.
@DrCruel His world-view is one of wisdom and brutal honesty. Let the nationalist sissies get hurt and cry by themselves when Chomsky correctly criticizes their state's flaws and this state deserves a lot of criticism. Anyway, you're too hardwired to change your view on the man and his views. And redneck is not equivalent to wetback.Because being a redneck is a matter of choice,you can choose to be ignorant, unhygienic and racist,but if you don't then you can be white and *not* be a redneck.
@MetrazolElectricity If by "brutal honesty" you mean "bald-faced lies", I agree. He was particularly notorious in regards the Khmer Rouge prior to 1978. Nowadays he stumps for Hezbollah. And he does it all for personal profit too. He's a "Lord Haw Haw" for the Bolsheviks - although I suspect his allegiances have shifted recently to the communist Chinese.
It's not hard-wiring. It's fact-checking. I'm a wargamer and an amateur historian, and I have no tolerance nor time for deliberate deceit.
@MetrazolElectricity As for "redneck", it most certainly is understood to refer to a specific ethnic cultural group, and is not meant as a kindly reference either.
Imagine your defense, now replacing the word "nigger" for "redneck". Would it win you over? Would whether it did or not be due to "hardwiring"? Are you telling me one chooses whether one's skin is light enough to turn red when exposed to sunlight for overlong periods?
@MetrazolElectricity Let us examine the word "redneck". What set of things does it refer to? Is it a complimentary term, or is it meant as a demeaning word representing the elements so selected?
In regards Leftists, I have found the reverse to be the case - the more dedicated one is to Leftist ideology, the more one is either (a) profoundly ignorant or (b) an amoral self-centered hypocrite. Indeed, I have found the worst college students are those steeped in this ideology.
@MetrazolElectricity I have a pertinent anecdote I would like to share. A single incident proves nothing, but take it for what it is worth:
A Leftist I met in DC, was keen to confront Vietnam vet counter-protestors at a rally. He called them "baby killers" and claimed they were warmongers against the legitimate governmetn of that country. The others at the counter-protest insisted that I not speak to teh young man, but I did so anyway - but with questions unrelated to what he expected...
@MetrazolElectricity I asked him first who the president of Vietnam was, and who the leader of Cambodia was. I asked him what sort of government they had today, and if he was familiar with the events of 1998. He could not answer me intelligently on any of these questions.
It was as if someone tried to make assertions about the American Civil War without knowing when or where it happened. All he knew about the Vietnam War was what he had learned second-hand from people like Chomsky. Sad.
@MetrazolElectricity Now mind, there is something to be said that Hitchens is a man of opinions. But he does take his time in forming those opinions. When he claims Mother Teresa took money from the Duvalier "crime family" of Haiti, it is not fair to say he makes this claim on the basis of "poor citations and bad references". The fact is that she did take such money.
I have a great respect for Mother Teresa's work, but I also respect Christopher Hitchen and his critique. Both have validity.
@DrCruel Contd. As for hitch, well his supposed independence of thought is really just a divergence from what he considers the mainstream ideology on social & religious matters,i.e. his own philosophy is a function of the mainstream ideology. So no magic there.You've just been enchanted by his tour de force rhetoric. Recognize that and the illusion fades.So, Mother T took money from D.,you'll find that MLK was licentious on occasion too.But Hitch won't go after that, Mother T's an easy target
@MetrazolElectricity No, I think Hitchens does honestly think out his ideas before expressing them. He is not always right, and sometimes deliberately courts controversy, but he is not nearly as intellectually dishonest as someone like Noam Chomsky or Ward Churchill. He really does make an honest and concerted effort to know what he is talking about before he speaks authoritatively on a subject (with the exception perhaps being his pronouncements on female comedian).
@MetrazolElectricity Gore Vidal is a self-absorbed jerk. Norman Mailer was a shameless supporter of the Black Panthers. They defined everything I despise about limousine liberals. They aren't even authentic Leftists.
Christopher Hitchens, however, was cut from the same cloth as George Orwell. He's not content to shoot spitballs from the sidelines. He actually has gone out and found the truth for himself firsthand. Hitchens is a man of real integrity, whether or not you agree with him.
@DrCruel My my, you've been burning the midnight oil.I have no interest in recording my biography on youtube though. These scholarly gentlemen : Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal are giants in american intellectual history who've created works that stand taller than those created by the entire right-wing hate fraternity combined. Hitchens is pretty elementary by comparison but he's still better than right-wing scum. Orwell is a left-wing legend, good guy. Anyway,it's memorial day. I'm off.
@MetrazolElectricity Well, you have the right to worship any sort of lunatics you like. It's your right. Neither of these supposed "giants" were particularly insightful or trustworthy, however. All one could guarantee from them was an unceasing, hypocritical anti-American hatred.
Neither bothered to do any fact-checking on what they would so confidently pontificate upon. Hitchens did. That why Hitchens has my respect, and the witless charlatans you mentioned do not.
I really hate how overrated Mozart is. I haven't read enough of HItchens' work to really judge, but if he wrote on the same level that Mozart composed...Well, then I guess he wasn't all that great.
sageSPH 1 month ago
This has been flagged as spam show
What do you call a dead Christopher Hitchens? One less war monger.
RPenta 2 months ago
Teabagging? Anal buggery? Cocksucker? As a matter of insult? And you claim not to be homophobic because "some of your best friends are gay"?
What's wrong with you? Are you mentally ill?
DrCruel 8 months ago
" ... And America is an incarnation of the Third Reich that doesn't even conceal its genocidal methods and aspirations. This is the sum total of what has been learned, by the guru of the left, in the last decade."
- Hitchens on Chomsky, in Slate ("Chomsky's Follies"; May 9, 2011)
DrCruel 8 months ago
"...In short, we do not know who organized the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, or any other related assaults, though it would be a credulous fool who swallowed the (unsupported) word of Osama Bin Laden that his group was the one responsible. An attempt to kidnap or murder an ex-president of the United States (and presumably, by extension, the sitting one) would be as legally justified as the hit on Abbottabad..."
DrCruel 8 months ago
So no, I cannot be a Leftist. To be a Leftist, I would have to be a racist, sexist, avaricious, psychopathic, tyrannical hypocrite. I would have to be a parasitic murderer and lie about it. To be a Leftist, I would have to be devoid of intellect or conscience.
I don't think a decent person can be friends with a real Leftist. That's why Christopher Hitchens is having so much trouble with them. He believed their bullshit, and is now trying to act on it. He cannot be a fascist and lie about it.
DrCruel 8 months ago
What are the scientific advances we can attribute to the Left? Lamarckian theory. Lysenko biology. The AK-47. Techniques for the operation of slave labour camps. Their most innovative ideas involve the most efficient means of disposing of large numbers of corpses.
As opposed to obesity, Leftist nations contend with the problems of starvation - this has much to do with their replacement of the agricultural revolution with communal farming, a feudal throwback.
DrCruel 8 months ago
I don't have the sort of keen intellect that Hitchens does. I certainly haven't seen the Ba'athist goons of Iraq and Syria firsthand, as Hitchens has. But I do not think it takes a sterling intellect to notice that these very Leftist client states of the old Soviet Union were run as feudal fascist autocracies. And I do have firsthand experience with Leftists of the ISO, who once billed Saddam as a champion of literacy and women's rights.
I honestly don't think the Left can be saved, really.
DrCruel 8 months ago
I suppose this is the same problem Hitchens has when he breaks bread with his Leftist brethren. Hitchens is a sincere anti-fascist, and so could not come on board when prominent Leftists were trying to save Ba'athism. He could not buy into the rhetoric of International ANSWER, and his integrity compelled him to say as much. People like Chomsky and Vidal have no integrity, so had a much easier time of it.
Thus why I like Hitchens, and can't abide the two-faced Leftists he is trying to save.
DrCruel 8 months ago
Is he dead yet?
TheAmazingamerica 9 months ago
To your first comment,you mustn't compare apples to oranges.To begin with,the failure wasn't wrong military policy but the very decision to interfere with another country's affairs.In nazi germany it was necessary,but there was no holocaust occurring Vietnam.Infact,US trespass into Vietnam said more about America's paranoia about communists than about Vietnam's so-called threat.It was a raw colonialist venture veneered with virtuous phrases about democracy while Chicago police was violating it
MetrazolElectricity 9 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity The Holocaust was pending. The liberal democracies knew that, once in power, the Marxists would slaughter millions of people. This is what the Khmer Rouge did - and what Noam CHomsky and fellow Leftists tried to cover up - in the early 1970s. This is what the Vietnamese communists did in Hue in 1968, and to the rest of the country in 1975.
The difference is that the US ended a genocide in Germany, and the Left successfully made one possible in Southeast Asia.
DrCruel 9 months ago
@DrCruel Come come :) you're too intelligent to believe what you've said. Don't get emotional.Loosely speaking a genocide is always possible anywhere. The fact is that after US was defeated and shooed out of Vietnam there was no holocaust.End of debate. You must reconcile with facts.Anyway, Vietnam debate is waste of time,it's like 9/11-inside job debate.It's over for serious people.
MetrazolElectricity 9 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity The fact is that after the US left Vietnam there were mass killings of hundreds of thousands of people, and many more South Vietnamese who fled for their lives - some successfully, some not. I am sure you are well aware of the boat people as well. The actual death toll during the subsequent "land reform" program at the hands of the PAVN range from 200,000 to up to one million people. It's hard to get exact figures.
This is hardly a controvertial assertion.
DrCruel 8 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity ( ... mind, there's a bit of deja vu for me, when you try to deny that the Vietnamese communists did what every other communist faction does once it won power. It's just like Noam Chomsky back in 1977, when he likewise tried to argue that the killing fields of Cambodia were just a "Right-wing myth", and that anything bad that might be hapenning there was not due to the Marxists taking power, but rather because the Cambodians had been driven to extremes by US bombings ... )
DrCruel 8 months ago
@DrCruel Chomsky roundly panned fascism whereever he saw it, right/left. It was just that he felt a moral need to account for his own country's faults and these faults,at the time, happened to emerge solely from the right-wing military-minded faction.The muscular right-wing bullies,unable to win debates against him, labelled him a commie bastard bolshevist scum. Whereas, he has always been just a genteel man of scholarship without political power writing truth silently by the dark window.
MetrazolElectricity 8 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity Chomsky only panned versions of fascism that were rivals to the brand he supported. He only spoke out against the Khmenr Rouge after their falling out withthe Vietnamese communists - before that point, he was an apologist for them. That's simply the facts.
I label him a linguist because he is a linguist. I label him a hypocritical Leftist hack for similar reasons. The man has no more integrity in terms of his running anti-US political commentary than Lord Haw Haw.
DrCruel 8 months ago
@DrCruel I suggest you go back and read his classic masterpiece of a book 'American Power and the New Mandarins'. You'll find no support of his of any form of fascism. We're talking about a really humble man of peace, emerging from the lower middle-class and standing tall against hideous right-wing puppet-masters with wealth and political muscle and an army of gullible footsoldiers like yourself( with all due respect, sir).Hack is hardly a term you should apply to a superior intellect like his.
MetrazolElectricity 8 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity We are talking about a dependable hack, who will do the bidding for his Left fascist paymasters in knocking the US at every turn, in part to feed the prejudices of "useful idiots" such as yourself (not my term; you make take the issue up with Lenin if you like).
"Hack" is at the least the term I should use to describe such a person using his talents, for profit, to forward the agenda of fascists. Indeed, I am being rather kind - in deference to your gentle sensibilities.
DrCruel 8 months ago
What are these imaginary "left fascist paymasters"?He lives on a professor's salary and has the backing of no major political force because he lambasts members of the Left too(he excoriated obama on his wars).Such is his impartiality.That kinda guy the big shots can't handle,so he just does smaller interviews here and there.You won't see him on MSNBC or CNN.Like you,they are frightened of him.Whereas,the right-wing masters who own your thoughts include billionaires like Murdoch,my good friend.
MetrazolElectricity 8 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity It took me two minutes to find Noam Chomsky, on CNN, claiming that the US were attacked in NYC and DC because it is an international terrrorist state. It took only a short while to find him in an MSNBC interview hawking another of his books.
I find Chomsky morally bankrupt and useless as a political pundit, and it took me very little time to find him on both CNN and MSNBC. I find it hard to believe a fan of his would be unaware of this.
DrCruel 8 months ago
@DrCruel And there's an interview of him on Charlie Rose too.But my larger point was he is not regularly called upon these shows,because people are scared to hear what he has to say.Whereas other pundits appear frequently. And of course, 9/11 attack was actuated,at least in part, by American foreign policy in various parts of the middle east.It's like the ruthless targeting of civilian buildings of Dresden by the Allies.If the Germans had won,Goebbels would have made it a germanized 9/11 story
MetrazolElectricity 8 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity George Galloway is likewise avoided as a pundit on CNN and MSNBC. Would there be a similar "fear" about his views as well?
As for the reasons behind the attacks by al Qaeda against the US, some of the reasons given by Osama bin Laden and his supporters are our tolerance for Jews and the promiscuity of our women. Am I to assume Mr. Chomsky's skewed ideological hatred of the US is more authoritative than the pronouncements of recognized spokesmen for al Qaeda?
DrCruel 8 months ago
See, leaders like Bin Laden,who stock porn,are not motivated by a religious calling but they employ religious overtones to animate the fiery spirit of impressionable young men into hating the US. Israeli occupation of Palestine is one of the juiciest reasons that inspire these plots against Israel's closest ally - USA.It's romanticized myth that scantily clad chicks set in motion terrorist attacks -the sort of drivel that makes for selling news here. "Manufacturing consent" --Dr. Noam Chomsky.
MetrazolElectricity 8 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity So in the same way, hypocritical Leftist hacks like Noam Chomsky manipulate impressionable young people in the US to hate their country. Perhaps that's why he's on such friendly terms with Iranian theocrats, despite being a professed atheist.
DrCruel 8 months ago
@DrCruel What do you mean to start with "So" ? haha You use that word when you have created a premise and nourished it with evidence and then gotten ready for a conclusion. All whole numbers are rational numbers. But not vice-versa,remember? Like Bill Maher said, there is no equivalent left-crazy to the real right crazy. Chomsky doesn't hate,he criticizes objectively. The right has the monopoly on hate. I saw your pal Glenn Beck on tv today.He was walking on all fours,covered in chalk-dust
MetrazolElectricity 8 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity By the same reasoning, I have been told that Black people cannot be racist - that only White people are racist. So also only men are sexist, according to some feminists. And so on.
Do I have a friend named Glenn Beck? I assume you can nourish this with facts. Or perhaps you have decided to stop pretending to be reasonable, and have decided to turn to personal insults and ridicule to make your points. More of a Ward Churchill strategy, wouldn't you agree?
DrCruel 8 months ago
@DrCruel Who has told you those above things? Take issue with *them*. That's irrelevant to your discussion with me. It's become clear that your reductionist stance makes you clump everyone whom you don't agree with in one category. In your eyes, if person A thinks gov. stimulus will boost the economy thru increased aggregate demand,then A is a black panther jewish communist homosexual atheistic feminist from san fran. Allay my fears and prove that that's not the case, my friend.
MetrazolElectricity 8 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity Pardon. You cannot be insulting, rude and obnoxious to me, you cannot accuse me of all sorts of thought crimes, you cannot claim that I base my assertions on suppositions and no evidence, even as you make unsubstantiated suppositions of an insulting nature against me - and then call me "friend". Not with a straight face, in any event.
In any event, I rather like Jews. My sort supports the existence of Israel, remember? It's Chomsky and his lot that backs Hezbollah.
DrCruel 8 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity ( ... incidentally, a discussion about Keynesian economics would be something other than what we're doing. The issue is subtle - in our present case, whether Keynesian rules apply when the problem isn't a lack of available or affordable capital but rather a culture of kleptocratic neo-socialist feudalism.
But we cannot have that discussion, as you've already decided I'm a stereotypical "reductionist". Frankly your own Left fascist leanings don't much impress me either.)
DrCruel 8 months ago
@DrCruel It wasn't an insult.See this is what I speak about. Criticism is taken so personally by the Right. Don't be so emotional. An angry man is a bungling polemicist. This is witnessed by your misguided connection between Chomsky and Hez. He doesn't pan Israel out of love of Hez but out of his capacity of a long-standing proponent of freedom and anti-colonialism. And yes, man, I'm a leftist fascist(oxymoron?), I'm actually writing from the grave of Stalin LOL
MetrazolElectricity 8 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity Fair enough.
You're support for known Left fascists like Chomsky and Vidal is obscene, and reveals a serious lack of moral character. Your repeated accusation that those who disagree with you are "Rightists" and not worthy of regard or respect demonstrated either a willful ignorance or a dedication to deceive. That you refuse to acknowledge these faults means your chances of improvement are dismal.
But I still think you're a nice guy. No offense. Just trying to help.
DrCruel 8 months ago
@DrCruel Come on, you've proven yourself to be an intelligent guy so why are you letting your charged up emotions stultify your otherwise keen intellect? Consider those left-leaning pacifist kids were singing peace songs in Chicago in 1968,would you call that fascism? Fascism implies authoritarianism and nationalism,both concepts are antithetical to the leftist code.&,people who disagree with me politically are often my good friends.My best friend is dyed in the wool republican right-winger
MetrazolElectricity 8 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity What's this? From your direction, this passes for constructive criticism. Why does it suddenly transform into an emotional outburst when you're on the receiving end?
For concepts that are "antithetical" to the Leftist code (is this the same code that criminalizes property owners and those involved in commerce, and calls for their "liquidation" as a class?), there does seem to be an awful lot of authoritarianism and nationalism in Leftist states. Odd that.
DrCruel 8 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity ( ... and how am I supposed to swallow this "singing" nonsense? Did no bombings and burning of buildings take place? Were no US soldiers spit upon on their return from Vietnam, as my uncle and many others were? And why did these protestors suddenly lose interest in Indochina, just as the Khmer Rouge opened up their killing fields and the Vietnamese communists began exterminating the Hmong?
Honestly. I want to be kind, but how else am I to respond to your obscene deceits?)
DrCruel 8 months ago
@DrCruel This should appear to you as elementary(I don't know why it hasn't already),there is a cardinal difference between the so-called left-leaning pacifist hippies of the 60s and the authoritarian govs. of the soviet union.An operative,ideological and cultural difference. This should be apparent to the naked eye.To amalgamate them into one group is intentional myopia of the kind employed by the insecure polemicist stripped of facts and driven into the corner...Play honestly, my friend
MetrazolElectricity 8 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity Perhaps there is a substantial difference between the Nazis and the Cliveden set, or between Bolsheviks and their effete apologists in the West - the latter amongst which the likes of Gore Vidal would have felt entirely comfortable with. Certainly Nancy Astor never gassed a Jew to death, nor did Beatrice Webb ever beat a Ukrainian farmer's head in with a brick. But why should I feel kindly to the snide, condescending apologists of such inhuman outrages?
DrCruel 8 months ago
@DrCruel I'm glad you brought up the Nazis because if I were to draw parallels between the iconic right-wing menace: Adolf Hitler and say, Tom Wolfe or WFB , that would be just as sloppy as your comparison of peaceful protesters like the Chicago pacifists or Noam Chomsky. Even though Hitler and his Nazis are the cornerstone of right-wing villainy, it would be unfair to say you are a crypto-nazi. Infact, as Bill Maher said, Stalin and alike so authoritarian, they are really just right-wing.
MetrazolElectricity 8 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity And yet I've been accused of as much. It is as unfair as calling a noted socialist like Hitler a "right winger" - as if the Nazi movement had as its objective the return of the Hollerzollern kaizer to power.
And again, the Leftists stumping for the NVA were hardly "pacifists", and were not shy about using crime and terrorism to achieve their goals. As for Chomsky's connection to Hezbollah, that's his own fault - similar to Galloway's "indefatiguability" speech.
DrCruel 8 months ago
@DrCruel I doubt any proof can be provided that shows that the hippies as a movement applied violent means to support the NVA. Not even dummy right-wingers of say john birch society back then claimed this much.
As for Hitler, LOL you're joking right? Come on. Let's be serious, no bogus conspiracy stories here, sir.
MetrazolElectricity 8 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity Yeah, I've heard this revisionist bullshit before. There's even a Leftist that wrote a book, claiming that US soldiers who said they were spit upon were lying, and that the whole thing was a "Right wing" myth. And of course there were no such people as William Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn and Angela Davis.
And no, I'm not joking about Hitler being a socialist. Are you serious when you praise noted Left fascists? Are you really that morally corrupt, or just pulling my leg?
DrCruel 8 months ago
@DrCruel Like I said, my friend, leftist fascist is an oxymoron. You're being hoodwinked by FOX news soundbites. And to say that Hitler's a socialist is the silliest thing ever. He drove out the communists and socialists out of germany when he came to power. He was a nationalist of the most right-wing variety. You do realize that world consensus is against your minority view ? Go to any history professor , say hitler was a socialist and he will throw you out of his office for wasting his time
MetrazolElectricity 8 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity Like I said, you're clearly not my friend. And in the modern sense, calling someone a Left fascist is frequently redundant.
Claiming that people like Chomsky and Vidal are on some moral pinnacle is not silly - it's obscene. Claiming that the architect of the National Socialist movement is a socialist is not "silly" either - it's obvious.
Bolsheviksmurdered members of rival Left wing movements in their day. Bolsheviks even murdered each other. That's what Leftists do.
DrCruel 8 months ago
@DrCruel In the modern sense or the FOX news hackneyed right-wing propagandist sense? Chomsky is morally impeccable. Vidal's a kick-ass critic who slays fools in his capacity as a man of letters. The consensus in the academic world is that Hitler was right-wing nationalist. So, did you take history lessons from Dr. David Duke at his Ku Klux Kollege?LOL And I think it's imperative to the salvation of this country for right-wingers to be offended. Truth, being liberal, will offend them.
MetrazolElectricity 8 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity Chomsky is morally impeccable in the way that Joseph Goebbels was morally impeccable. Both were willing to do whatever they could to aid their particular brand of socialism. As for Vidal, he's a self-promoting crackpot. His "insights" on Timothy McVeigh and the WTC attacks are particularly nutty.
That Nazism was the end state of capitalism is only accepted by Marxists.
As for your repeated reference to me being a "right winger" or Klansman, fuck you too. No offense.
DrCruel 8 months ago
@DrCruel Neither Chomsky nor Goebbels was a socialist. J.G. was right-wing nationalist who popularized the Big Lie propaganda technique, now adopted by the right-wing american media, and which Chomsky constantly tries to expose thru his speeches like the one about Manufacturing Consent. So actually,as just shown,they are opposites and Goebbels in your boy. And of course, you're a right-winger, just admit it. Why don't you? You think it's something to be ashamed of? Well, it is.
MetrazolElectricity 8 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity You should also say Edward Bernays was behind the "Big Lie" strategy. That's another popular "big lie" amongst Left-wing apologists.
There is no "right wing". There is a Leftist criminal cabal, and then their are targets and victims of that mafia. But there is no defining element common to all within this so-called "right wing" other than that the mainstream Left is antagonistic towards them. Thus how Israelis in a kibbutz can be deemed to be part of this "right wing".
DrCruel 8 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity The confusion you seem to have (or perhaps, seek to perpetuate) is the dissonance between what Leftists say they are and what Leftists actually do. Leftists traditionally are bombastic, pompous racist sociopaths, who have no regard for other people and who consider the general public to be a sort of cattle. Mussolini is a good example of one, as is Trotsky. And of course Chomsky and Goebbels fit the category also.
You should do a bit more reading.
DrCruel 8 months ago
@DrCruel haha Mussolini and Hitler are poster boys of the right-wing.Every serious person,even thinking right-wingers, know this. There really isn't any axiomatic leftist position because so-called leftists generally find themselves helping the poor, saving the environment, eating healthy organic food,being scientifically innovative, fighting for civil rights, doing yoga and exercise and other diverse positive things that bring laughter and sunshine. It's very flexible, liberal and heartwarming.
MetrazolElectricity 8 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity There is the Left, and there are victims and targets of the Left. There's no organized antithesis to Leftists, no more than there is an organized ideological antithesis to pirates. Leftists, at least in teh modern sense, derive their economic justification through violent thievery, most often through successful sedition. They don't stand for anything more lofty than that.
DrCruel 8 months ago
@DrCruel Contd. And now for the Right-wing ,aka Mordor, well, we have homophobic, coca-cola-drinking, macdonalds eating, bible thumping, gun touting, red sweating, angry , unhygienic, anti-evolution and anti-science, anti-choice, secession-minded, xenophobic, anti-union, fat, FOX news watching, global-warming-denying, anti-intelligentsia, beer-belly, ugly racists.
MetrazolElectricity 8 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity King Fidel jails homosexuals. Bolsheviks killed the Ukranians because of their ethnicity. While the Leftists were cheering the Vietnamese communists on, tehy were exterminating the Hmong. There is a virtually endless litany of Leftists crimes, and a death toll of 100 million and climbing.
To top global crime with hypocrisy, Leftists then accuse their victims of Leftist crimes. Isn't that brilliant?
Of course we're not friends. How could we be.
DrCruel 8 months ago
One would be hard put to come up with a historical movement more destructive to society than Leftism. One would have trouble finding a political faction more keenly intent on the property, earnings and wealth of others. And the Leftist God is a jealous God ... anyone holding to alternate beliefs is harassed, attacked and - if Leftists have an opportunity to do so - murdered in the night.
If there is a means to tyranny more vile, more intent on the demeaning of humanity, I cannot name it.
DrCruel 8 months ago
@DrCruel I think everyone should note what you've done.You've taken a few stale and feeble examples from the dead past, embellished, amplified and presented them as the entire history of the left.If I played tht game,I'd include Adolf Hitler and George Wallace in the current right-wing's design.Truth is, I don't play weak-minded games like that. The present reveals that right-wingers are uneducated jingoist jesus-freaks, while so-called leftists are scientifically-inclined, healthy intellectuals
MetrazolElectricity 8 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity To be fair to the American Left, they aren't normally murderous bastards. Even crazies like William Ayers end up "selling out" for a steady paycheck. Leftists in the US are more interested in co-opting the government and looting the treasury than they are in bringing the whole structure down. They might stump for Left fascists, but most can't bother themselves with any actual hands-on killing.
Thus the term "limousine Leftists". You can smell the hypocrisy.
DrCruel 8 months ago
@DrCruel Ah-ha! So now you are retracting from your previously made generalization about leftists being these blood-thirsty fascist hooligans. Now you're willing to concede that some don't do hands-on killing. Trust me, buddy, 10 more days, and you'll be singing that the leftists are the salt of the earth.Truth always wins. Btw, leftists have huge presence in academy,including sociology.I see you've stuck closely to your right-wing klansman racism, judging by the scorn towards "third world".Nice
MetrazolElectricity 8 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity Not at all. I'm claiming that their American cousins tend to restrain their natural impulses, I would say on two grounds. The first is cowardice, whereas the second is greed. Leftists are treated inordinately well in this so-called "capitalist atrocity" of a nation, and many of them are very wealthy. They do not want anything to disturb their stock portfolios or state benefit plans.
It is, for example, why Chomsky sought tenure at a state college. So also Angela Davis.
DrCruel 8 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity American Leftists aren't nearly as manic as their overseas brethren. Most Leftists in the West content themselves with scaring up environmental scams and profiting from the chaos. Only the global warming swindle comes close to other brilliant Leftist ideas like eugenics and Lysenko biology.
Science? To Leftists, it's just another opportunity for scams. The people they berate traditionally are in the hard sciences. Leftists tend to like sociology and "Third World Studies".
DrCruel 8 months ago
( ... go check out the Sokal hoax if you want to know about the relationship Leftists have with science. It's a real hoot.)
DrCruel 8 months ago
@DrCruel P.S. The term is "limousine liberals", my hapless hack :/
MetrazolElectricity 8 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity I use my words carefully. Leftists like to expropriate things that do not belong to them, not the least of which are words. For example, "progressive" and "liberal" have nothing to do with their regressive, autocratic ideology or the particulars of Leftist governance.
No sir. I am a liberal. The proper term is "limousine Leftist". And again, in response to another unjustified personal insult directed against me, screw you too.
DrCruel 8 months ago
@DrCruel You use your words thoughtlessly, pal. Admit it, you made up "limousine leftist" and now you're embarrassed because I know your concoction is a dim-witted corruption of a popular term. Prof. Chomsky teaches at MIT because it has become home to him over the decades, it is after all a great place for linguistics and other science. Right-wingers won't be caught near a technical univ. like that. Lastly, If you're a liberal then your buddy Glenn Beck is Mahatma Gandhi's Second Coming! LOL
MetrazolElectricity 8 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity No, I'm very careful with them. And I'm not your "pal". I think we've been over this ground before.
I should like to claim to have invented the term, as it is a necessary one. But simply googling the phrase will demonstrate that this isn't the case. Since I'm not a habitual liar (one among many reasons that I'm not a Leftist myself), I really can't affirm your kind accusation.
DrCruel 8 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity In regards Chomsky, he has his position based on his accomplishments as a language scientist, particularly in the field of parsing. He's not a particularly decent person, and his skills in language have made it easier for him to lie effectively.
My issue is if the US has an evil and fascist government, why is Chomsky so keen on working for it? He could just as well be a linguist in Cuba or Syria - nations which he seems to have a much higher opinion of. Why the hypocrisy?
DrCruel 8 months ago
@DrCruel No hypocrisy. It's a matter of habit. He grew up here. See, you can criticize the vile corrupt serpentine media and system of governance of a nation like US and still appreciate the fine educational institutions we have here. Our universities are a sanctuaries for intelligent and compassionate souls like Chomsky... outside which lie the barbaric right-wing animals roaming the streets like rabid dogs holding a bible in one hand and a gun in another hand braying about bloody patriotism
MetrazolElectricity 8 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity Oh come now. MIT is an institution involved in the creation and perfection of military hardware for a regime and system of government Chomsky implies is no better than Nazism. Could he find no better work than to be employed by the very government he ceaselessly vilifies, at an institution instrumental in making the US military the most powerful in the world?
He's gotten rich at it too, I might add. Chomsky's appearances on the lecture circuit aren't cheap.
DrCruel 8 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity ( ... or perhaps you're conceding that Chomsky's hypocritical Left fascism is a matter of habit. That would be an amusing claim, although I'd still have to disagree - Chomsky's unceasing bile against the US government and sideways support for outrageously oppressive factions allied with the Left aren't made of simple lies, but are instead very well crafted campaigns of deceit.
This isn't something he does out of obsession. He's paid quite well for it.)
DrCruel 8 months ago
@DrCruel If wealth was what Chomsky sought, he could have sold out, gone mainstream, compromised his values and made piles of cash by becoming an apostate and then an apologist for an evil empire. You're telling me he makes more dough than baloney-brained right winger propaganda artists like glenn beck do? LOL. He's lives a surprisingly spartan life for a man of his talents. If you combined the IQ of the entire staff of FOX news it wouldn't compare to Chomsky's. The man is leagues above you all
MetrazolElectricity 8 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity Chomsky did "sell out", went mainstream Leftist, and made piles of cash by first promoting the interests of the Soviet Union, then the post-Marxist Left in the West. The man is a multi-millionaire and a stockholder.
He's up there with Ward Churchill and George Galloway as a political pundit, a shameless apologist for the mainstream Left. I don't see how FOX News or any other similarly legitimate news service can be compared with his self-interested anti-US diatribes.
DrCruel 8 months ago
@DrCruel First, there is no mainstream left and what piles are you talking about. Have you ever seen Chomsky? He has a most austere presence. This is in stark contrast to your Tom Wolfe who always travels with a line of immaculately pressed, pretentious white suits. And that quote of Hitchens' tells more about Hitch than about Chomsky. It is clear that he's sold out, or the cancer has so debilitated his reasoning that he can't think straight.
MetrazolElectricity 8 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity Yes there is a mainstream Left, it is extremely rich and hypocritically exploitative, and the "piles" I'm talking about is the lucrative bullshit of the Leftist elite.
I don't have a "Tom Wolfe". What has he to do with Chomsky's hypocrisy? If I claim the Titanic has sunk, can you claim it hasn't because the Andrea Doria sank? What are you on about?
And if telling the truth is what you call "selling out", I can now see why you have such a high opinion of Chomsky.
DrCruel 8 months ago
@DrCruel Subjective qualities such as level of ostentatious presentation are best measured through a methodology of comparison. Thus, it's more relevant to note the snobbish attire of right-wing "intellectual" Tom Wolfe when talking about Chomsky's relative austerity in presence. Got it? Now, I suggest you spend a day watching the many videos of Chomsky in which he unwaveringly answers the truth about American policies,while, hitch's videos are primarily about the trite topic of religion
MetrazolElectricity 8 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity George Washington wore a wig and had dentures made from irory and gold. Julius Caesar wore a red cape in battle. Alexander had a horse he named Bucephalus. None of this speaks to the ongoing diatribe of hypocrisy and lies that emanates from Chomsky's verbal and written works on politics. From his stumping for the Khmer Rouge to his support for Hezbollah, Chomsky (and many of his fans) has always been on the side of the fascists.
Got it?
DrCruel 8 months ago
@DrCruel I'm sorry anything not overt eludes your imagination. Let me explain again. You claimed that Chomsky became filthy rich by misusing his talents. Well, I proved that Chomsky isn't your private-jet traveling mogul (trump) or a bungling pretentious general who struck gold (washington) or the republican-turned-dictator (caesar). These gilded names are just that -gilded names. Chomsky is the real deal and that leaves right-wingers many distraught. And you guys should be.
MetrazolElectricity 8 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity Pardon, I wasn't aware you were being so obtuse.
Chomsky has millions of dollars in assets. He invests in stocks while claiming that capitalism is fascism. He worked for the Pentagon while claiming that the Pentagon was a representation of American Nazism. Whether or not Tom Wolfe wears a fancy suit does not change the fact that Chomsky is a hypocrite.
It is because of people like him that I'm not a Leftist. Too bad you aren't decent or sane enough to see through him.
DrCruel 8 months ago
@DrCruel So what? I have friends who own millions of dollars in assets and their talents and values aren't particularly noteworthy. I personally think your focus on Chomsky's assets is an unimaginative evasion. He has never come on for a blanket ban on all capitalism activities. He's never claimed to be an authority on economics. It's just boring right-wing cowardice to run away from the topic of foreign policy and charge Chomsky of being anti-capitalist. What's next ? Chomsky is a queer jew?
MetrazolElectricity 8 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity So in other words, you're saying that just because he's a hypocrite is no reason not to ascribe to his views religiously. And you're so upset about me saying something bad about your ridiculous hypocritical "prophet" that you're going to accuse me of racism and homophobia.
Perhaps if you used a few more dodges I'd be led off track. Try calling me your buddy again, that might work.
DrCruel 8 months ago
@DrCruel I think it's been well-established that the ring-wing is a humorless,self-righteous,self-hating, self-pitying bitter racist homophobic territory in the political spectrum.You've shown yourself to embody all these qualities, especially,self-hatred by denying the friendship of a superior intellect as that of yours truly ;) The reason WFB was respected by some in the left, was because he was shrewd enough to act with less overt bellicosity,a tactic lost on a glenn beck-enthusiast like you.
MetrazolElectricity 8 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity What "right wing"? Monarchists? The bourgeoisie? Christians? Socialists who have run afoul of the mainstream Left? "Little Eichmann" stockbrokers? Fans of "professional" wrestling? Libertarians? Who are these people of which you speak?
Are the "humorless" the people you insult and ridicule? Are the "self-righteous" the people who point out the stupid assertions of Leftists? Are the "self-pitying" those workers that complain about taxes?
What are you on about this time?
DrCruel 8 months ago
@DrCruel Yes, I like Jon Stewart's formula of using derision to annihilate the hideous and stupid monster that is the right-winger. Ridicule is roundly deserved by the blood-thirsty right-wing. And the people who oppose taxes are uneducated in basic economics and should have their vote nullified due to their nescience (a proposal WFB supported in the 60s). Watch Chomsky's withering remarks on the passing of WFB,he still remembers how he slayed the right-winger with ideas and not intimidation
MetrazolElectricity 8 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity Of course you prefer derision as opposed to facts or rational arguments. You've said as much throughout, both with your choice of Left fascists as personal heroes, insults and innuendo for everyone else, and your own personal conversational mix of arrogance, condescension and obtuse stupidity. I expect you'd be a fan of Ward Churchill as well.
But you haven't answered my question. What is this supposed "right wing" you speak of? Is it another imagined enemy of yours?
DrCruel 8 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity Certainly you have no sympathy for the peasants forced to fund the Leftist aristocracy's indulgent excesses. I would expect no less from a Leftist fanatic. Less clear is how you'd "motivate" those workers the Left have betrayed, once they've been disenfranchised and have decided that slaving away so a Leftist like Ted Kennedy can maintain his yacht, or Barney Frank can fund a brothel at his home, isn't worth the effort.
Stalin's idea was to shoot people. What's yours?
DrCruel 8 months ago
@DrCruel Peasants? Look at the antiquated elitist right-wing way you're calling regular folks. Nobody uses words like peasants anymore, mi'lord . These guys Ted and Barney have been great champions of the common man and at the end of the day don't they have the right to a few indulgences for their sacrificial public service. Oh,by the right-wing I mean crackpots like the tea party, KKK, neo-nazi party,john birch society,you,GOP, NRA, etc etc etc! These aren't imaginary entities. Wish they were.
MetrazolElectricity 8 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity There is no "Right wing" outside of Marxian myth. The words used by Marxists for the general public are "masses" or "cattle", which I find very offensive - my use of the term "peasant" was meant as a kindness, clearly undeserved in retrospect, in response to your radical, cruel and absurd ideological sensibilities.
And again, what has a libertarian movement of anti-tax advocates to do with radical Jew-hating socialists? Or a movement dedicated to the antebellum South?
DrCruel 8 months ago
@DrCruel I just recited to you a handful of right-wing crazy organizations.This anti-tax stink you're making is a bogus charade. These animals don't know an iota about economics, all they desire and ,I'm sorry to say you seem to be part of this group, is right-wing maniacal devilry in which minorities are hung from trees, modern government and law is dismantled and a return is made to the primitive tribal race-based form of regression in which science, taxes and other man-made devices are killed
MetrazolElectricity 8 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity No - you recited to me a list of organizations which you claim are "right wing", none of which are particularly related to any of the others. One in particular - the Nazis - were a decidely socialist, Left-wing faction. One - the KKK - was most closely associated with the Democrats, not the GOP. As for the NRA, it's a lobby group that wants to preserve the Second Amendment.
The ACLU wants to preserve the First Amendment. Is it a "rightist" group as well?
DrCruel 8 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity The sort of people who refer to the general public as "animals" are Leftists. They are the ones most noted for being flagrant racists, and are most notorious for the ethnic genocides of the 20th century - all perpetrated by Leftist factions of one stripe or another.
If you aren't a racist yourself, why proudly proclaim your association with such a racist sect of ideologues? As for anti-science Ludditism, are you talking about environmentalists? Are they "rightist" too?
DrCruel 8 months ago
@DrCruel Thankfully the general public is not fully right-wing, although you would like to have that way. Right-wingers in my judgement are racist animals. You guys want to poison children's brains with creationism and then take them behind the altar and fuck them. It is true that large segments of the right-wing are child-molesters because they are social-failures who overcompensate with guns and religion. I pity you right-wingers. You didn't have a chance from the day you were born, dude..sad
MetrazolElectricity 8 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity You should be thankful enough of the public is gullible enough to tolerate the left's thievery and violence. If they put up a united front, as they did in Singapore, there'd be no place for Leftists to hide - let alone prosper like parasites at the expense of taxpayers they clearly despise.
But aren't you saying we should be thankful for piracy? Since Leftists are racists, aren't you also being thankful that a segment of the population are habitual liars as well?
DrCruel 8 months ago
@DrCruel the general public is the left. you crazies are the loud-mouth outliers.your religious nutjob ideology of hatred towards gays and minorities isn't worth two nickels.Go pat your lonely back with a few hackneyed expressions.No thinking person is interested in your Klan talk.Just cause Chomsky fucked your grandma in '67, you're whining now.Get over it and return to the woods and burn your crosses, you illiterate village idiot. Inbred cialis-popping sister-fucking redneck scum.
MetrazolElectricity 8 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity The general public is in the Tea Party. Left fascists like you call them "teabaggers" and accuse them from everything from religious fanaticism to racism.
Mind, I'm not in the Tea Party. I don't think you can chase off Leftist pirates simply by organizing voting rallies and telling them to "shoo". People are going to have to get much more serious about them, because Leftists are more than happy to use violence to get at our money,
Thanks for showing your true colors.
DrCruel 8 months ago
@DrCruel Even mainstream republiklansmen consider teabaggers a fringe right-wing anti-black violent hate group. So I don't know what the fuck you're talking about, Eichmann. And tell me when leftists used violence in US in a major way? Those brethren of yours who were bombing black churches in the south were assuredly anti-communist right wing scum. Heck, you crazy bastards killed Kennedy when he was in the South. You've shown your hate colors to me long time ago, my dear right-wing imp.
MetrazolElectricity 8 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity If what you mean by "mainstream republiklansmen" is Janeanne Garofalo, you'd be closer to the mark. Given your degenerating state of lunacy (palatable even as we pass our messages), that might very well be your perception.
As for me "not knowing the fuck" or the like, you seem intent on continuing our little exchange regardless. Curious that.
DrCruel 8 months ago
@DrCruel You've been boring me with your crackpot conspiracy theories and right-wing second-hand demagogy for days now. By republiklansmen, I mean your GOP party, the party of hitler-enthusiasts. Teabaggers like you come and go, son. Lost in the hatred of Chomsky's truths and embarrassment over your failing intellect, there is a little child pretending to be Dr Cruel...PhD in right-wing anal-buggery. Don't bore me with your drivel,go out and distribute pamphlets supporting intelligent design
MetrazolElectricity 8 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity Again, in the face of so-called "boredom" you have an odd reaction. It seems more like the truth that you've been chastened for championing Left wing fascists as your heroes, and have become very ill-tempered because of it.
Scratch a Leftist, and the hatred and racism will come flowing out of the wound. Your last homophobic posting is a perfect case in point.
DrCruel 8 months ago
@DrCruel haha Where's the racism, klanboy? Homophobic posting. I've got friends who are gay. Heck, isn't your side that believes in the Leviticus Bible bullshit and wants to strip gay people of their rights? lol, and you spoke of hypocrisy. Fucking right-wing illiterate tool of the sewers.
MetrazolElectricity 8 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity Add to characteristics of leftists the tendency to bald-faced lies and denials, even when caught in the act.
At least you've been careful to keep out homophobic references this time around, sticking to scatalogical insults. I suppose that's an improvement. Maybe I've had a positive impact on you.
DrCruel 8 months ago
@DrCruel Just show me what act you've caught me in, David Duke? haha Like your master Glenn Beck, you're just words, my little right-wing imp. You haven't been thinking straight recently have you? Too much moonshine at the last Cross-burning, klanboy? Teabaggers, like you, love to cry foul about leftists. I've see a thousand guys, talk just like you, act just like you, man. You're an intellectual lightweight anti-university, anti-science, anti-global warming, anti-evolution, jesus-freak bigot.
MetrazolElectricity 8 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity That's your best? Deny everything, then change the subject? Throw out a few insulting non-sequiturs as a smoke screen?
No wonder you like Noam Chomsky and Gore Vidal so much. You're just like them.
DrCruel 8 months ago
@DrCruel Oh yeah? Just quote me, you right-wing cocksucker ... haha You're just prattle, no evidence no proof... that's why you're a religious nutjob. You don't value evidence at all. You're a complete republiklan village idiot. And me like Gore and Prof. Chomsky? Wow, You flatter me,my right-wing simpleton.
MetrazolElectricity 8 months ago
@DrCruel contd. And lastly, your right-wing crowned head Hitler's idea was to shoot people.
MetrazolElectricity 8 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity So your idea then is to have a Leftist leader shoot people, then claim well after the fact that he represented "Rightist reactionaries" all along. I suspect it will take no more than a generation to make popular the idea that Stalin was a "Rightist" and even a "state capitalist" also.
Again, I expect no better.
DrCruel 8 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity As for William Buckley, he was ceaselessly mocked by members of our Hollywood version of the Cliveden set - not the least because he so keenly got at the root of Left's hypocrisy and ideological idiocy. He offered to punch Chomsky in the nose at one point - probably the best answer such a Leftist hypocrite really deserves - but instead finally decided to let Chomsky make a fool of himself on Buckley's show.
And why should I be a fan of Glenn Beck? Is he that good?
DrCruel 8 months ago
@DrCruel Bullshit. Buckley was making a joke - a reference to the fact that he once said to gore vidal "now listen you queer, stopp calling me a crypto nazi or i punch you in your goddamn face!"chomsky didn't make a fool of himself at all,but while reading all this comments (from left and right)i don't get the feeling that anyone wants sirious discussion.maybe its part of the USA that black and white thinking is much more present than in europe. Fuck Hitchens/Fuck CHomsky is all thats being said
janjanjan0 5 months ago
@janjanjan0 I don't think Buckley had much respect for either man. Or so my reading of the National Review would lead me to believe.
Don't be shy. There are at least as many Left-wing nitwits in Europe as there are in the US. Just go to any coffeehouse in Athens. We seem to be better at avoiding riots in our streets these days too.
DrCruel 5 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity ( ... incidentally, in those history course I have taken in college I've gotten As. I have voiced exactly that asserrtion to my professors, without any negative comment on their part.
I don't mean to be rude, but you seem to be an extremely ignorant person, perhaps because you listen too much to people like Vidal and Chomsky. Maybe you should stay away from ZMag and try some real news sources, like The Economist. Then you might not offend people like me so much.)
DrCruel 8 months ago
To my knowledge, Hitchens has never gotten into a brawl with someone just because he panned his book. Mailer was an insufferable, arrogant bore - and apparently an abusive alcoholic as well.
I don't slander the Left. I tell the truth about them. I tell the truth about sycophantic so-called "liberals" as well. Indeed, I'd put Gore Vidal up there with that Left fascist, "you don't have a right to live" George Bernard Shaw.
DrCruel 9 months ago
Big fan of Hitchens but how pretentious is Buckley, huh?
grands1am 9 months ago
@grands1am Buckley was flamboyant
MetrazolElectricity 9 months ago
Fuck ads
Lostinmezzy 9 months ago
Academic types are the problem, Hitchens has lived the realities of life and therefore talks with real life authority, some things you can't truly understand unless you live through them, no matter how intellegent you are.
gb63100 10 months ago
Chris is being kind. His father was a far more superior writer and polemicist than hitchens. I mean William Buckley in his prime would chew out this leftist drunkard.
MetrazolElectricity 11 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity - Bullshit.
boxingaddict25 11 months ago
@boxingaddict25 haha swearing - the height of hitchhead eloquence. bill buckley has emasculated heavyweight intellectuals like gore vidal and norman mailer, these are pulitzer prize winners(mailer) and writers of epics. compared to them, our drunk little vanity fair columnist with a collection of 10-page books and a small following among a few non-academic young people is the definition of zero. Hitchens - the Glenn Beck of the Left.
MetrazolElectricity 11 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity none of those you mention would hold a candle to Hitchens in a debate.. you are delusional
SexxyB3ast 11 months ago
@SexxyB3ast You speak with characteristic hitchhead ignorance and pride. I can understand that in this day of stupidity where american school are producing subpar intellects, it's easy for a generally youngish rebellious punk to be drawn to a purportedly clever man. I've read a few of hitch's books, lightweight airplane material. His oratory style is theatrical. He's a good entertainer.No able professor or academican takes him seriously though. Like I said, he's fodder for the non-academic types
MetrazolElectricity 11 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity As one who're not of an American school, nor a random "youngish rebellious punk", I would say you should put away your synonym book and come up with contra arguments to which of Hitchens' points you're disagreeing with. I've never met a professor or real academic who would even consider posting such blatant stupidity about Hitchens, as your post. You seem to be like a product of a Pat Robenson "school". You can compose a sentence, but the arguments just aren't present.
ulkien 11 months ago
@ulkien I wasn't invited to present arguments yet,sir. To begin with we have here a boozer, a brain that's too flooded with johannie walker black to be speaking about the same reality that the rest of humanity shares. In hitch's world maybe going after a shriveled old nun who worked in fly-infested allies of calcutta with the poor is an anathema, but for men who draw their strength from non-alcoholic resources, we find charity and benevolence a virtue.
MetrazolElectricity 11 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity You obviously don't know the full story of Mother Theresa. She was a user of the poor to help raise money, millions, to build new institutions in her own name, where the poor continued to "live" in an environment no one in the west would tolerate. She was against the empowerment of women, and felt that birth control was one of the world's greatest evils. She was ridiculous, and thank goodness for people like Mr. Hitchens who aren't afraid to reveal unpleasant truths.
scudder99 9 months ago
@scudder99 Like anyone else, Mother T had her foibles. But to suggest something Machiavellian was up her sleeves is bit of a fantasy. You shouldn't be so gullible in believing these conspiracy theories. Even if hitchens can point to certain associations of her which may have been questionable, I doubt hitch can prove a motive. There's a reason the mainstream believes that NASA landed men on the moon ,while only the fringe cries foul-play. Same with the marginalized Mother T slanderers.
MetrazolElectricity 9 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity This is no conspiracy theory. These are simply facts. Foibles? These are deep character flaws that, because of an association with a religion, are marginalized. By all means, hitch your star to HER wagon.
scudder99 9 months ago
@scudder99 You're missing the forest for the trees. There exists an overwhelming reservoir of facts that cast Mother T in the most saintly(metaphor,calm down) light.
MetrazolElectricity 9 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity Saying it, or writing it, doesn't make it true.
scudder99 9 months ago
@scudder99 And, folks, that was my original contention about Hitchens' condemnations about Mother T, Thanks :)
MetrazolElectricity 9 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity Hitchens fully gives a full account of his critiques, unlike you.
scudder99 9 months ago
@scudder99 Is that why hitch generally has not won over the academia ? Why is it that usually bonafide scholarly men and professors aren't bewitched by hitch the way young internet atheists and readers of vanity fair are? Here's one reason why : The man's notorious for poor citation and bad references. It's like saying the Glenn Beck show is a well-documented news show,and not an opinion show...Think.
MetrazolElectricity 9 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity More unfounded blather.
scudder99 9 months ago
@scudder99 Sad to see you give up. I was enjoying this :)
MetrazolElectricity 9 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity You would.
scudder99 9 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity I would disagree. Most Leftist academians are notorious hypocrites, and tend to read their ideas and stances off the same cheat sheet. Professors who don't follow along tend to get abused in the faculty lounge.
But Hitchens has his own mind. He takes his views from his own thoughts, and not from the revealed truth of others - not even from such a venerated figure of religious adoration as Karl Marx. This makes him someone these Leftist academian philistines can't swallow.
DrCruel 9 months ago
@DrCruel To begin with, most members of the academy are ,what say Glenn Beck would call, leftists. So the minority of right-wing academicians usually specialize in civil war studies& suchlike. Now, Karl Marx has been vastly demonized by the media, he never revealed a blueprint for society;Das Kapital was an honest critique of capitalism. Conversely,however, nobody adores Marx as a religious figure,it's not:Marx came down from a mountain holding a tablet bearing the communist manifesto contd.
MetrazolElectricity 9 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity Most non-Leftists (I don't think there is a coherent uniform class of "right wing" that opposes this cabal) tend to stick with the hard sciences - physics, mathematics and the like. But there are Leftists represented here too. I think this has much to do with how unscrupulous Leftists can be about seizing and maintaining their power and authority. The unions don't help either.
I am familiar with the academic world. Karl Marx is a god-like figure to these people.
DrCruel 9 months ago
@DrCruel I feel this is in sharp contrast with reality. In my experience and reading, members of hard sciences such as those favoring stem cell research, people like Stephen Hawking etc, tend to be grounded in liberal philosophy.Do you think Prof. Dawkins would vote republican? Right-wingers are,like I said, generally absent from academy altogether. They go into Bible stuff etc. I've met marxist economics professors, they don't really think of Marx as a god. In fact..contd.
MetrazolElectricity 9 months ago
@DrCruel Contd. Karl Marx said that religion is an opiate of the masses. He was atheist and most of his admirers tend to be atheistic. So I guess that's the final nail in the coffin of that strange hypothesis of yours. Unless you were using god/religion poetically, then by the same token, followers of hitchens or glenn beck tend to be stubborn,recalcitrant and religious too.Lastly,Chomsky is a much braver spokesman of the unbridled truth than Hitchens is. Anyway, off to watch a movie. TC
MetrazolElectricity 9 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity Yes, I know. I'm claiming that Leftists are, amongst many other very nasty things, hypocrites. It's the same sense of self-righteous obnoxious fervor that has them imposing despotic self-serving autocracies in the name of universal equality and freedom.
As for Chomsky, he's an amoral Leftist jerk that lies creatively to make money. He say some smart thing about parsing though.
Enjoy your movie. Cheers. DC
DrCruel 9 months ago
@DrCruel I agree with you,there are a few nasty leftists,but they are generally more genial, less bellicose and more rational minded individuals than their counterparts on the right. Right-wingers fear and hate science, berate the academy, place their faith in guns and religion and are generally bigoted nationalists. Now not all are this way, for instance, I'm sure you're a decent and smart fellow.And Prof.Chomsky's considered a fearless moral authority on american foreign policy.A real Hero.
MetrazolElectricity 9 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity I don't know about these "right wingers", whatever they are. But those people vilified by the Left and lumped together on "the Right" that I know tend to be involved in hard sciences or mathematics. It's liberals and Leftsts I've found studying sociology, "Third World Solidarity Studies", the theatre, and so on.
Chomsky's only considered a "heroic figure" by Leftists. His "heroism" nets him a comfortable living in speakers fees. He's hardly suffering for his hypocrisy.
DrCruel 9 months ago
@DrCruel You must admit you're saying all this with some cheek. I mean, we know for a fact that members of the academy,including hard science and sociology, tend to be leftists in general.I can think of several such scientists on the left, not even a single one on the right.Why,last week I was having beer with a group of programming geniuses,all liberal.But turn on fox and you'll see these right-wingers that have eluded you.Heck,your tea party klan is consists of these people. Contd.
MetrazolElectricity 9 months ago
@DrCruel Contd. Look at the anti-abortion, anti-evolution racist rednecks that comprise the right.I mean these people are nuts.Besides,I suspect after a certain level of intelligence,a man just cannot be definition be conservative or religious.The right-wing illusions suffice usually for lower IQ people.This is what I've noticed. Lastly, Chomsky, as Hitchens pointed out elsewhere,has been persecuted for his views and critiques by the large right-wing media.Still fights on, that's a real hero.
MetrazolElectricity 9 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity It depends on which "Right" you're talking about. You appear to characterize them with with a racial epithet, even as you accuse them of racism. But what of libertarian atheists? Free market entrepreneurs? Would you claim Richard Cheney is a "racist redneck" with a straight face?
As for what Hitchens has to say on Chomsky, I can cite a few choice articles of my own, especially recently. Hitch doesn't say nice things about that despicable charlatan. Shall I find them?
DrCruel 9 months ago
@DrCruel If it hadn't been for Chomsky, who effectively introduced heavy-weight intellectual and moral discourse regarding american politics, then there wouldn't be a successful Hitchens. Redneck is a racial epithet? Oddball. Anyway, these few so-called "libertarian" atheists like tom wolf are the exception,not the rule.Everyone knows this.The avg. conservative can't read the bible he loves,forget Hayek's pseduo-economics. We're talking about low-life gun-touting modern-day klansmen here,friend.
MetrazolElectricity 9 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity What "heavy weight' would that be? He is a tireless critic of the US -whether they are at fault or not - and can be counted on always to parrot the views of the mainstream Left on everything. He has literally taken about-faces on issues, then denies he has done so in spite of his own written record. I have no trust in his commentary, and no respect for his worldview.
And yes, "redneck" is a racial epithet, much like "wetback". It is obviously so.
DrCruel 9 months ago
@DrCruel His world-view is one of wisdom and brutal honesty. Let the nationalist sissies get hurt and cry by themselves when Chomsky correctly criticizes their state's flaws and this state deserves a lot of criticism. Anyway, you're too hardwired to change your view on the man and his views. And redneck is not equivalent to wetback.Because being a redneck is a matter of choice,you can choose to be ignorant, unhygienic and racist,but if you don't then you can be white and *not* be a redneck.
MetrazolElectricity 9 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity If by "brutal honesty" you mean "bald-faced lies", I agree. He was particularly notorious in regards the Khmer Rouge prior to 1978. Nowadays he stumps for Hezbollah. And he does it all for personal profit too. He's a "Lord Haw Haw" for the Bolsheviks - although I suspect his allegiances have shifted recently to the communist Chinese.
It's not hard-wiring. It's fact-checking. I'm a wargamer and an amateur historian, and I have no tolerance nor time for deliberate deceit.
DrCruel 9 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity As for "redneck", it most certainly is understood to refer to a specific ethnic cultural group, and is not meant as a kindly reference either.
Imagine your defense, now replacing the word "nigger" for "redneck". Would it win you over? Would whether it did or not be due to "hardwiring"? Are you telling me one chooses whether one's skin is light enough to turn red when exposed to sunlight for overlong periods?
DrCruel 9 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity Let us examine the word "redneck". What set of things does it refer to? Is it a complimentary term, or is it meant as a demeaning word representing the elements so selected?
In regards Leftists, I have found the reverse to be the case - the more dedicated one is to Leftist ideology, the more one is either (a) profoundly ignorant or (b) an amoral self-centered hypocrite. Indeed, I have found the worst college students are those steeped in this ideology.
DrCruel 9 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity I have a pertinent anecdote I would like to share. A single incident proves nothing, but take it for what it is worth:
A Leftist I met in DC, was keen to confront Vietnam vet counter-protestors at a rally. He called them "baby killers" and claimed they were warmongers against the legitimate governmetn of that country. The others at the counter-protest insisted that I not speak to teh young man, but I did so anyway - but with questions unrelated to what he expected...
DrCruel 9 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity I asked him first who the president of Vietnam was, and who the leader of Cambodia was. I asked him what sort of government they had today, and if he was familiar with the events of 1998. He could not answer me intelligently on any of these questions.
It was as if someone tried to make assertions about the American Civil War without knowing when or where it happened. All he knew about the Vietnam War was what he had learned second-hand from people like Chomsky. Sad.
DrCruel 9 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity Now mind, there is something to be said that Hitchens is a man of opinions. But he does take his time in forming those opinions. When he claims Mother Teresa took money from the Duvalier "crime family" of Haiti, it is not fair to say he makes this claim on the basis of "poor citations and bad references". The fact is that she did take such money.
I have a great respect for Mother Teresa's work, but I also respect Christopher Hitchen and his critique. Both have validity.
DrCruel 9 months ago
@DrCruel Contd. As for hitch, well his supposed independence of thought is really just a divergence from what he considers the mainstream ideology on social & religious matters,i.e. his own philosophy is a function of the mainstream ideology. So no magic there.You've just been enchanted by his tour de force rhetoric. Recognize that and the illusion fades.So, Mother T took money from D.,you'll find that MLK was licentious on occasion too.But Hitch won't go after that, Mother T's an easy target
MetrazolElectricity 9 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity No, I think Hitchens does honestly think out his ideas before expressing them. He is not always right, and sometimes deliberately courts controversy, but he is not nearly as intellectually dishonest as someone like Noam Chomsky or Ward Churchill. He really does make an honest and concerted effort to know what he is talking about before he speaks authoritatively on a subject (with the exception perhaps being his pronouncements on female comedian).
DrCruel 9 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity Gore Vidal is a self-absorbed jerk. Norman Mailer was a shameless supporter of the Black Panthers. They defined everything I despise about limousine liberals. They aren't even authentic Leftists.
Christopher Hitchens, however, was cut from the same cloth as George Orwell. He's not content to shoot spitballs from the sidelines. He actually has gone out and found the truth for himself firsthand. Hitchens is a man of real integrity, whether or not you agree with him.
DrCruel 9 months ago
@DrCruel My my, you've been burning the midnight oil.I have no interest in recording my biography on youtube though. These scholarly gentlemen : Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal are giants in american intellectual history who've created works that stand taller than those created by the entire right-wing hate fraternity combined. Hitchens is pretty elementary by comparison but he's still better than right-wing scum. Orwell is a left-wing legend, good guy. Anyway,it's memorial day. I'm off.
MetrazolElectricity 9 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity Well, you have the right to worship any sort of lunatics you like. It's your right. Neither of these supposed "giants" were particularly insightful or trustworthy, however. All one could guarantee from them was an unceasing, hypocritical anti-American hatred.
Neither bothered to do any fact-checking on what they would so confidently pontificate upon. Hitchens did. That why Hitchens has my respect, and the witless charlatans you mentioned do not.
Have a nice holiday.
DrCruel 9 months ago
@MetrazolElectricity Oh goodness. They'd chew each other out. It would have been a joy to watch.
DrCruel 9 months ago