Chris, And our children will pay the price. Since World War II every US president contributed toward paying off US debt except Platt's heroes Raygun and the Bushes.
At the end of the Carter administration the national debit was less than one trillion dollars Raygun and Daddy Bush quadrupled it to more than four billion. Clinton as eventually able to stop the growth and reverse the trend until Baby Bush restored the rise and brought it up to more than eight trillion. Basically Platt's "conservative" heroes have shown their followers to be nothing but fools and themselves to be lying bitches. Krimel ----------------------------------- Chris, That conservative Presidents were freely elected by the American people in 7 of 10 elections over the past 36 years suggests that Krimel's version of history and the presidents who served might be slightly unbalanced. Regards, Platt . > Chris, > > I get the idea that your vision of a "right winger" is a bit different than > what it is over here. Left and right have meaning only with reference to a > center and what the Great Satan Raygun did in this country was radically > shift the center to the right. Prior to Raygun people like today's FOX news > and AM talkshow creeps were considered fringe crazies. Raygun legitimized > them. As you know any historical analysis is incomplete but I can think of > several things that allowed this to occur. > > In his autobiography Bill Clinton identifies one of them as the civil rights > movement. While it finally made Americans face the consequences of our > fundamental belief that ALL men are created equal; it produced a huge > Dynamic shift. And that shift had negative consequences as well as positive > ones. Since democrats were seen in the South as pushing the changes; all the > blue states in the South became red states. In my state the Republican party > was so weak that even into the 70s they didn't even have primary elections. > Now they run the place. > > Perhaps a bigger factor was the Cold War which is where a lot of Platt's > rhetoric comes from. In second grade I remember being told what evil people > the Chinese communists were because they tortured people who didn't toe the > party line by sticking chopsticks in their ears. Also what evil people the > Russians were because they censored scientific research that did not conform > to the party dogma. What I took from this is that torture and censorship are > evil and that people who do it are evil. When I look around today what I see > is the communists are gone but we are censoring free thought and torturing > people. > > This was a time when there was a real and present threat of nuclear war > every single day. Paranoia over the red menace resulted in concrete changes > in the US political system. Fear of the rise of a communist or socialist > political party resulted in changes to ballot access laws. This insures, to > this day, that political parties other than the two in power have almost no > chance of getting started, much less taking getting elected. > > Yet another factor was assassination. The Kennedys and King provided sources > of inspiration and moral leadership and the vacuum they left behind was > never really filled. Johnson was one of the most politically effective > presidents in US history but he was not likable or charismatic enough to > actually move the hearts as well as the minds of the people. > > >From the assassinations of the 60s and the radical changes of civil rights > to the defeat of our military in Vietnam to the political trauma of > Watergate the US currently suffers from a kind of collective PTS. We just > want it all to stop and be static for a while. > > Raygun was a kind of dream come true. He was what Baulldriad might call a > simulation of a president. Not a real president but a hyperreal president. > An actor playing the part of a president so that the simulation no longer > had reference to the real at all. It has become its own justification. His > thinking was so simplistic, he took us all back to a kind of fantasy > "Pleasantville" were everything was black and white and Mrs. Cleaver always > wore pearls at diner time. > > There was not shortage of oil, no complexity to the economy, no race > problems, no pollution; just a bunch of bureaucrats making life tough for > good honest folk trying to make a living. > > So when Raygun was once asked, "How can an actor become president?" His > answer was, "How can a president not be an actor?" The simulation has become > the reality. That transformation is complete. An AWOL drunken cokehead can > recreate himself as a war hero more valiant that decorated veterans and > former POWs. It is no longer truth that matters. No longer reality that > counts. It is the appearance of reality and the simulation of truth that > count. > > But maybe reality has more substance in your world. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/ Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
