Sweet Jesus, I Hate Ralph Nader

Some things never change -- Ralph Nader is shooting his mouth off about health care reform in a most un-constructive fashion (torpedo the existing bill and after a big public relations campaign simply ram through single payer via reconciliation -- yeah that will happen), threatening a third party run for the Senate in Connecticut against Christ Dodd, and has the balls to inquire at to whether Obama is going to be an "Uncle Tom" to corporate power in the process (the second time he has phrased the question in this offensive fashion that I've heard.)   

What a fucking piece of garbage he is.  This is a man who shouldn't show his face in public, so filled with shame should he be about the debacle that he facilitated in 2000. 

Ironically, Nader reminds me of no one so much as Joe Lieberman -- so completely convinced of his own rectitude that anyone who disagrees with him is automatically morally suspect.  I've really grown to loathe the bastard.

(h/t (I think) to Jeff Fecke.    

Comments

[Corvus9]

Hear, Hear.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

Ralph Nader got one thing right in his goddamn life, and we on the Left have been feeding his ego for it for the last 45 years. And somehow, he's managed to cause more damage since than those Chevys ever could have.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

And I wouldn't compare him to Lieberman, who, I hope, is at least aware of his own curdled ego. He may 'play a righteous man on television' but I don't see him as such.

Nader really believes in himself and in his own publicity. He is honest, forthright, brave, and just totally stupid and wrong about almost everything. Maybe, if Nader has an equivalent, it's Bachman.

[big bad wolf]

all correct. i still rue this particular fall. he really was a good guy long ago and spurred a lot of others into doing good things. ego caused part of the downfall, yes, but so too did narrowness and a belief that there is a truth and it can be possessed. a failure, hearkening back to something i read somewhere, to grow up, perhaps.

[MR Bill]

I used to think "oh what a noble mind is here o'erthrown", (looking at what the Consumer Crusader has become) but now incline to "Grandpa's in the ficus again".

[Sir Charles]

MR Bill for the win.

[big bad wolf]

mr. bill wins.

still, at the risk of being seen as churlish, i wuld say that, without that big battle at the end, our sweet prince would likely have end up in the ficus some day.

[Krubozumo Nyankoye]

Just for fun I went back and took a look at wikipedia's vote breakdown for 2000. The glaring problem with Nader is obviously Florida, if only 0.55% of Nader's votes had gone to Gore, Gore would have won in Florida. All other arguments aside except the obvious one that more Nader voters would be likely to go with Gore than Bush on an intuitive basis, makes it glaringly obvious that Nader at least helped, and could even be called responsible for, giving us the first four years of Bush, which were the most disasterous.

However, there is one other state where the Nader vote could have been decisive. New Hampshire. If 2/3 of the Nader vote in N.H. had gone to Gore, he would have won the electoral vote regardless of what happened in FL.

Since I wasn't in-country at the time of the 2000 vote I can't really say what the mood was just before the election but Nader had to realize that he had damaged Gore's chances and if he had been truly interested in having a positive effect on government should have bowed out and thrown his support behind Gore.

The legacy of having very likely swung the Fl. vote in favor of Bush by taking votes away from Gore is one of the most shameful and disasterous political legacies in the country's history.

All the chickanery (sp) of the Rs aside, Nader should have realized that Bush would be an unmitigated failure as a president - in fact I find it difficult to believe that he did not, yet he did not do the honorable and meaningful thing, he stuck to his pathetic guns (2.74% of the popular vote) and paved the way for more than a decade of suffering and humiliation.

Despite that opinion, and despite the fact that I probably do not have the right to speak even though I still carry a US passport, I have grave reservations, in so far as I understand what is happening with the legislative process, about this health care bill. In the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit that for more than 14 years now I have spent the majority of my time working in Brazil as a US citizen. As such I have not had to purchase personal health care in the US since 1993 when it became unaffordable to me. Instead I have limited my time spent in the US. Here in Brazil,even as an expat, I am completely covered for virtually any health issues. My co-payments for medical matters are so slight they are hardly worth computing.

While it is true that there are certain things about spending most of one's time here that are not exactly endearing, this issue of health care is, to me, an important consideration because I work in a hazardous profession medically speaking. I have also lived in some other countries where there is no health care at all, so I have some limited degree of empathy for those millions living in the US with no hope of getting any in the current or future system.

So to me this issue seems a symptom of a kind of national madness, and it saddens me. What the hell has happened to the people? Is that not ultimately, almost exactly the same question one would ask about Nader?

[Sir Charles]

KN,

Good to hear from you again.

Nader, along with much of our elite media (for different reasons), basically decided that there was no meaningful difference between Bush and Gore. Now this seems to me to be obvious juvenile nihilism, but much of the coverage of the campaign manifested that attitude.

Moereover, Gore was just dumped on unmercifully by any number of elite reporters (Maureen Dowd and Ceci Connolly leap to mind), portrayed as a serial exaggerator, a man of few fixed principles, a nerd, and a bore. Bush, for reasons I could never understand, was featured as a likeable regular guy, the guy you'd like to have a beer with (even though he was a dry drunk), a moderate, and a grown up. Go figure.

To me, Bush always seemed like a pissy, resentful rich kid, who wasn't very bright and didn't really want to work hard. And I always figured that if I had a beer with him I'd end up punching him in his smug face -- but that's just me.

The health care issue speaks to a greater madness than all this. In the end, all I can conclude is that the lack of full-throated public support for socialized medicine (except for the elderly) comes down to tribalism and racism -- the strange notion that it will somehow redistribute wealth to those who aren't like you, the black and the brown, the people who "refuse to work." It's a common refrain. That and the success of scare tactics and misinformation. How do I put this -- most Americans don't know shit about the rest of the world. They have no idea as you, and minstrel hussain boy, and I have all experienced, that as a foreigner visiting any number of countries you can walk into a hospital and get treated for free with no hassles whatsoever and receive good quality care. It's sad really. And tiresome.

[n8-zilla]

not to be a dick or anything, but don't you think *some* of the blame for 2000 (and after) might go to the lousy campaign Gore ran? if liberals felt that Gore was at least willing to listen to them on occasion, Nader would probably not have gotten as many votes. sure, Nader can be annoying; but it seems weird to lay all that blame on a guy very few folks would have paid much attention to, had they not felt a reason to look elsewhere for a champion for their beliefs.

[Gene O'Grady]

Nader is overrated (and a self-centered jerk who inspired many others of the same ilk) even on his signature issue of the Corvair. As I heard from a car guy I knew at the time, and as I discovered from having a teenage son who, while he may never learn to drive on his own, took me to a kazzilion car shows, the Corvair was a creative and imaginative experiment that had problems in its first version. Most of all of those problems had been cleared up by the time Ralph's book came out.

The real impact was that GM never made another car with the attempt at moving forward that the Corvair represented (they're actually rather beautiful, unlike the Roger Smith boxes), and most American executives learned that innovation was a pain and managing by layoff was the way to go.

[Krubozumo Nyankoye]

You may well be right about the nihilism,like I said, I don't really know because I wasn't here to witness it first hand. Not that that would have been conclusive but it would have been more informative. I agree that Gore underperformed in a variety of ways. He is pretentious in his claiming to have some rigor in his overall thinking on the warming issue, but he is still miles ahead of many of his so called peers. Please don't misunderstand me, he is no scientist and as an advocate of science his limitations are obvious.

I knew when Bush decided to ignore the Kyoto protocols that we were fucked. His unilateral repudiation of the ABM treaty was pure beligerance fueled by childish faith. His aggressive war against Iraq was the straw that broke the camel's back, the whole world knew the rationale that was given was bogus.

I think you are right (SC) on all counts concerning the health care issue except perhaps for one thing, it does not necessarily reqire that millions take to the streets to effect change, in fact just the undertone, the dispositive murmur of disapproval on the part of a vast undercurrent, might intimidate the puppets of vested interests.

One thing to me, seems certain. Ultimately, people will resist tryanny.

[Mandos]

Things looked different back then. From 1992-2000, the left looked and Clinton and said, "This can't possibly be the best America can give." Now in 2008, the verdict is in: "Yep, yep it was." But back then, it just wasn't very clear that there was a substantive ideological difference between the parties. There isn't, but it turns out that the differences matter anyway, even if they aren't substantive ideological ones.

Anyway, I'd have more patience for Nader if he actually used the energy he generated in the 2000 presidential run to construct permanent institutions---but credible "old line movement" leftists don't think he did. Chomsky IIRC counseled a vote for Kerry in 2004. ie, Nader squandered the follow-through, apparently.

But I can't on principle blame someone for running in an election. That the margin was so narrow suggests that Gore also has something to blame.

[big bad wolf]

i think gore deserves some of the blame, at the very least for not having clinton campaign for him in places that clinton still had significant appeal.

[Sir Charles]

n8 an Mandos,

Gore was certainly not a perfect candidate. However, he got brutally unfair treatment in the media. Notwithstanding that, he won the popular vote by a small but decent margin.

The critique of the Naders (and at times the Chomskys) of the world is that the differences between the major parties are not meaningful. I would ask that you think about such issues as progressive taxation, abortion rights, the environmnent, the right to join a union, gay equality, international cooperation, and dozens of others and consider whether these are "meaningless" issues. Third party movements are a side show and an indulgence we cannot afford.

Gene,

The Corvair is actually a pretty cool car. It's a shame it couldn't be rehabilitated, although I blame the car makers for their continued an systematic resistance to safety innovation. They really were their own worst enemies on this and so many other issues (health care, milegage standards, etc.)

KN,

I am not confident that people can always distinguish tyranny and freedom. Certainly if the tea baggers are any guide, the cause for optimism is limited.

[oddjob]

I was only a little kid (five or six), but I always thought the Corvair was quite ugly. Of course, the fact that the white trash neighbors had a pale gray-blue one might have something to do with that.

[Sir Charles]

oddjob,

Take a look at it again. You might be surprised. (Or I could be wrong.)

[oddjob]

You'd be wrong.

[oddjob]

To my mind it doesn't really look that much different from Chrysler's "K cars".

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

The irony is that, before the two political "Sons of the Desert" -- the originals were much funnier -- started their 'ain't tuppence wort' a difference' crusade, it was much more true. We were saddled with the racists, the Republicans had a number of truly outstanding Senators and governors, etc. (Btw, I not only don't respect Chomsky's politics, I don't even accept his semantics, which seem to be almost Platonic in the disconnect from reality.)

But the one thing that has been consistently true has been the shrinking of the overlap. The idea that a party that has Giuliani and the Maine ladies as its farthest left, and a party with the Nelsons and Landrieu -- and a couple of crazy Carolina Congressmen like Shuler and McIntyre -- as its farthest right are 'the same' barely deserves the title 'idea' -- I'd prefer 'delusion.'

And it is a dangerous delusion, mostly because the one chance we have of getting the majority we should have after 2010 is to stress the fact that 'party makes a difference' to force Republicans to accept or denounce the ravings of the tea-baggers, of Palin and Bachman, of Beck and Limbaugh -- and to make sure that the voters know what they have actually said. (We know what Inhofe, Bachman, Gohmert, Franks, Foxx, Coburn, etc. have done and said. We've seen the contradictions, the changes in positions from the Kirks, the McCains, the Boehners, the Greggs. We know the positions that a Jim DeMint takes, the ties of a Haley Barbour to the CofCC -- and his own 'pardoning' scandals, where he only pardons people who have worked on his house.

But we are political junkies. The people who vote for them don't, for th most part, know how crazy they are, or understand the implications of their positions and instead of talking and laughing among ourselves, we should be getting the word out, not on blogs, not even on tv ads -- which usually aren't worth the money spent on them, but on newspaper ads, op-eds, and even by putting flyers up on lampposts and handing them out at bus stations or putting them on car windshields.

I agree with KN that people can distinguish between tyranny and freeedom, that they can understand political ideas, but only if there is some push to actually instruct them, some counterweight not just to the Limbaughs and Becks, but to the army of preachers of the Church of Jesus Christ, Republican.

I became quite a bore during the last campaign by saying that 'we were Obama's surrogates' but I'm still saying it, and still saying it is true. And I mean each and every one of us that has something to add. (I don't travel and my district is one of the strongest Democratic ones in the country, but I can write, and even try and design ads. Sir Charles, you can write, but you can also toss some cash in the pot. MHB, why not put together a group to do some free concerts in small cities and hand out flyers. The same with the rest of us. Don't just count on the Democrats, or Act Blue. If nothing else, gho to church suppers, to bingo games or festivals, or to local bars and talk and talk and talk. Don't exaggerate, don't make a single statement you can't prove, challenge people to look up what you say. And maybe get our other liberal friends doing the same thing.

(I got off topic and started to rant, but none of the ideas are bad ones.)

[Sir Charles]

Jim,

Well said. I do make a point of making direct cmapaign contributions in a number of districts every year. I feel fortunate to have the luxury of being able to do that. (I am saving a big chuck for Lieberman's opponent and Snowe's.)

I also pounded the pavement for several weeks running for Obama last year in Virginia, which is a very micro thing to do, but one I am convinced pays off.

oddjob,

C'mon now -- I like the lines on this car:

http://www.classiccarhireworld.com/images/oldie%20chevy%20corvair_3254.jpg

http://www.seriouswheels.com/pics-1960-1969/1964-Chevrolet-Corvair-Convertible-b-r-fa-sy.jpg

[Sir Charles]

That would be "chunk" -- I was crossing up "chunk" and "check."

[oddjob]

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

[Sir Charles]

Indeed.

[joel hanes]

The turbo-charged floor-shifting manual "Spyder" version of the Corvair was big fun to drive.

Weren't mandatory seatbelts the other Nader signature accomplishment? I always thought that was much more sigificant.

[Sir Charles]

Joel,

I think that Nader's push for auto safety was a huge societal contribution. From seat belts to airbags, it was one of the most important public health advancements of the last four decades. I wish he'd let us remember him for that -- and the entire consumer rights movement -- and fade away from the contemporary political scene.

[Krubozumo Nyankoye]

Gore deserves a fair share of the blame for running a bad and tepid campaign. But I think it is fair to say that had Nader been man enough to realize he was going to aid and abet the extraordinary mayhem that ensued from Bush getting into office, the right thing to do would have been to bow out. That assumes of course that he could fathom the differences between Gore and Bush. He should have stuck with consumer advocacy and stayed the hell away from politics.

I have seen so little of the man on the street type of thing in the US for the last few years that I can only speculate whether people are approaching the point where they realize they are being exploited in the most cynical possible fashion or not. The media are no guide at all in this because they seem to be heavily biased and immune from reality. There is the net, and that is about all that ties together people who actually think about things, and they are of course constantly afflicted by hordes of people who don't think at all.

But I do still think that it will ultimately happen that people in the US will realize what their situation is and begin to act upon it. I have no illusions that it will be any time soon, or that it will be before things become substantially worse than they are now.

Question for SC, have you ever been to Brasilia? I have spent a little time in D.C. which is where you appear to be, and I go to Brasilia about every three months and stay with a charming family whose patriarch is an emigre Georgian distantly related to Stalin. It's a small world isn't it?

I feel I should address some direct comments to Prup but I realize that may be transgressing the mores of this blog, if so, well, shit happens.

Although I was bemused by your introductory words, I fully agree with you that the outstanding distinction between the parties should be the core issue in the next elections. I don't, however, think that there is any chance of making a clear and true distinction via the media, I think the media is too corrupted. So I also agree that the antidote is to operate at the grass roots level. It is a long distance race as well, so since the right wing seems to be flaring off as much energy as they can now, it seems to make sense to let them do so.

The race is won in the last few meters.

I have to go back to work for a while now but I will check in later.

Cheers,

[Sir Charles]

KN,

I have not had the pleasure of going to Brazil at all, but would very much like too. It would be interesting to see Brasilia, which is kind of the post-modern version of DC.

There is no problem engaging other commenters here -- in fact it's one of my favorite things about the blog. Throw something out there and see where everyone takes it, often making for something far better than the original post.

I try to encourage friendly debate -- until, of course, I get called an "obamabot" and I throw civility to the wind.

The media is fairly hopeless for the most part. I hope that this recent split over health care reform doesn't divide and damage the effectiveness of the on-line left, which despite its flaws has been instrumental I think in bringing about significant political change.

Hope you'll keep turning up.

[Krubozumo Nyankoye]

SC I intend to try to keep turning up. Now and then I get literally sent up or down the river for 3-4 weeks at a stretch.

I find this venue for discussion to be very cordial and will enjoy participating I am sure. I hope my contributions are constructive.

Cheers,

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

KN: Let me add my voice to those welcoming you, and celebrating the value of your contribution. And before I comment directly, I have to point out something that is 'too large to be seen,' the simple wonder of the Internet. Some of us have just gotten used to it, someone like SirC's son has probably never been without it since he could read -- and our contributor who case his first vote for Obama has had it readily available since he entered school, or at least since puberty.

But I was born before the famous See It Now opening show where the (truly astounding) beginning was a simultaneous shot of the Brooklyn and Golden Gate bridges. And now, someone like KN could, without difficulty, go on to several sites, including weather.com, turn to the map section, and if he knew my address, could see the tree in the backyard next to mine, and the garage in mine.

We can sit here and talk to each other, a few dozen people, none of whom might ever have had the chance to meet, none of us who would -- except, for some of us, perhaps during an election campaign -- ever be in the same 'social circle.' Imagine how unlikely it would be to have a prominent Washington lawyer, a musician, a Japanese-American ex-pat living in Brazil, and a semi-hermit autodidact from Brooklyn even in the same building at the same time. (Whole movies have been written just about such a weird meet-up in a crisis like the Blitz.)

And it costs us what? 60 cents a day for Internet service, 30 cents amortized for our computer -- figuring a fairly cheap one and a 6 year lifespan of it. I mention the cost, because I was involved in Science Fiction fandom in the 60s and 70s -- and even many of the quirky abbreviations and verbal tricks, and the style of writing we are used to on blogs started in those fanzines. Maybe an 'apa' could have brought a ghread like this, with this sort of group together -- except that if you made a comment, it took two weeks to a month before you saw replies, it took having a mimeograph or 'ditto machine' to produce one, and even ignoring inflation and doing it 'on the cheap' as I always had to, postage and paper might have cost $10 an issue, and only the people who it was sent to would ever read it, unless you visited a friend and read his copies. And something six months before was lost in the file folders.

(And, for those of you whose typing is like mine, so you can't see the letters on the 'backspace' key because they've been rubbed off from overuse, you'll never know the joy of rolling a stencil up, slatering the typo with 'corflu' waiting for it to dry, and then going back to typing -- and ditto machines were even harder to correct. Not to mention having to clean the keys of the 'typewriter' -- several times a page -- so the letters weren't just smudges.) And forget involving someone out of the country, International mail was too slow and too expensive for that to be practical.

And now I can take part here, and in a thousand other places simultaneously, depending on nothing more than time. An interchange takes minutes, not weeks. And all that it takes to be heard is a reputation for being worth the time it takes to read your comments. (Somehow, I even make it above the line, if barely.)

Just nattering. Off to cat feeding, then on to 'real comments.'

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

KZ: Yes, voting for Gore -- who I'd never liked, and who ran an awful campaign -- was one of the hardest votes I've done -- remember we didn't know how stupid, how awful GWB would turn out to be. He was talking 'compassionate conservatism,' which might have been true, he had the experience of growing up in a 'political family' and we didn't know how impervious to learning he was. And, above all there was VP candidate Joe Lieberman -- and I already hated him for his consistent support of censorship, a personal 'hot button issue' of mine.

(I'll admit that I might even have 'gone the other way' if I didn't know how bad the Republicans in Congress were -- and they were far better than they are today.)

But one of the other factors in my post above is gthat I don't just want to elect Democrats -- which i do -- but I want to start pulling Republicans back from the pit of madness they occupy. We have to have a 'second party' and ideally a 'loyal opposition' -- now, to use a Steve Benen line, I'd settle for a sane one. And one result of our very successes in the past two Congressional elections was to replace the more 'moderate' Republicans with Democrats and leave the 'real crazies' as the only electable ones.

What's worse is thqat even the relatively less crazy Republicans are running for the asylum as fast as they can because they think that it's the only place they can get votes. Hammering them for this and punishing them for the crazies they refuse to denounce might just bring them back into real political discourse, instead of the Beck-Skousen-Birch-Folger insanity that they currently parrot.

[News Nag]

Prup wrote: "We have to have a 'second party' and ideally a 'loyal opposition' -- now, to use a Steve Benen line, I'd settle for a sane one."

Ha! I love that. Really, to have a choice only between Tweedledee and Tweedledumbshit is dangerous, mainly because Tweedledee will sooner or later lose power to the Rampaging Ape Republican Party again. If the Apes are still on their crazy fascistic trajectory, I can't even imagine how awful things will become when that day arrives.

I also love Chomsky, which is another story, but I'll say that I do so because he historically explicates what most people cannot elucidate for themselves and need tutoring about. This is his genius and remarkable contribution. He is not a politician. He tells us how it is and how it should be, which keeps us working toward a more fully realized better world. Yet I can see why he might be frustrating for some already versed in how sadly the world works.

BTW, this website and its commenters are such a cut above everywhere else I've been, that I stand in appreciate and awe of your awesome cogitating.

[Sir Charles]

News Nag,

Thnk you -- those are very kind words. And our commenters certainly deserve them.

The Republican descent into madness really should be much more of a mainstream news story than it is. These people are really unfit to govern. No, really unfit to govern. I dread the notion of them regaining power any time in the near future -- these people are actually worse than Bush and the damage he did is nearly incalcuable.

I am appreciative of what someone like Chomsky can bring to the table in terms of getting people to look beyond the standard set of assumptions that are imposed upon us in conventional political discourse. This sort of thing can be very helpful to somone like me who does live in the belly of the beast so to speak. But like most lawyers, I am relentlessly rooted in mundane notions of how the hell we are going to get stuff done in the precious time that we have a working majority. History suggests that such time is short and that we need to make the most of it. Hence my desire for sober unity -- about the only time I embrace sobriety.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

(written before I read Sir Charles' response)
I am not sure of the etiquette here. What DO you do when a person praises you and then when you read his comments discover that he has gotten almost everything you've said entirely backwards -- if you are reading him correctly. (Perhaps I'm the one who is misunderstanding.) Certainly, given my convoluted style it is not surprising that he missed what I meant, but to briefly restate the points I disagree with him on...

First, the idea that the parties have ever been -- in my lifetime at least -- "Tweedledee and Tweedledum" is nonsense, and one of the most dangerous pieces of nonsense that has been peddled by idiots such as Nader and Chomsky. (And, NN, since you are a newcomer, let me state that I was born during the Truman Administration. I'm a true baby boomer, born -- afaik -- as a result of a 'welcome the troops home' celebration that got out of hand.)

Even during the time when there were many Eisenhower Republicans -- who I respect -- and when the racists were still buried in the Democratic party, before LBJ chased them scurrying into the waiting Nixonian arms of the Republicans, there were still distinct and important differences in the ideas and philosophies of the parties. (In fact, it was the "Tweeedlers" who gave us the Presidencies of Nixon and GWB by insisting on this totally counter-factual idea.)

Now, of course, when the parties have drawn so apart that there is almost no overlap between them, the use of the image is devastatingly wrong. Yes, the farthest right of the Democrats may have some points of agreement with the Republicans -- I'm talking about the half dozen truly conservative Democratic Congressman like Minnick, McIntyre and the like, not the Blue Dogs or liberal-to-centrist Democrats who simply disagree on one or two (usually religious) ideas like abortion or gay rights. (And again because you are new, I should state that I am entirely pro-choice and as a bisexual who grew up in a lesbian household, a fierce proponent of gay rights.)

Furthermore, any person who misuses the term 'fascistic' is also dangerous, and I wish such a person would lock himself into a room for a week studying the subject before he opens his mouth again. The problem of course is that the term gets so overused as a content-free 'snarl-word' that when there is a truly fascistic movement around, it is impossible to be heard pointing it out. (This is the actual reason for a 'Godwin's Law.')

In fact, there is a chance that the Beckoid movement could become a full-scale fascism. It is a long way from there so far, but the potential exists. It lacks important aspects of fascism as it existed, not just in Germany and Italy, but in those countries -- like Rumania, Finland, and even France -- which had prominent but unsuccessful Fascist movements. It does not celebrate war, violence, and 'action for action's sake' as positive goods, it has yet to gain -- afaik -- a major hold on the veterans of recent wars. Most of all, it has not become what all fascisms were, a 'youth movement' perverting youthful idealism and the desire for action into the evil it became. (As
I have reminded people in the past, Hitler was the ol;dest of the prominent Nazis, and he was five years younger than Barack Obama when they both took office.)

And, while it may be a minor point, the first step towards fascism is 'dehumanizing' the opponent. Okay, we all use metaphors, but your use of the term 'ape' sounds a little stronger than that, and I'd suggest you reconsider before using it in that way.

Finally, Chomsky's explications are frequently clear and convincing -- and he so frequently tells us liberals what we want to hear -- that we tend to ignore the fact that he usually gets his facts wrong, and that his thinking is sodden -- even, maybe particularly, in his semantics -- with a Platonic idealism that is invariably dangerous in the long run. Like a Freud or a Marx, he has been valuable - though much less so than those -- in pointing out flaws in current systems, but his answers are usually as wrong as the positions he warns against.

[end of rant]

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

Sir Charles:
I hope my blast did not scare NewsNag off, but that it makes him reconsider some of his positions, think them through more and then, if he still holds them, to back them up more strongly and, where desireable, makes me reconsider my own.

On your other points, I can only say that the "Republican descent into madness" will only become a story if we -- meaning not just bloggers but Democrats and particularly Democratic candidates -- make it so. The tendency of the MSM to be 'stenographers' or 'play-by-play' reporters means that NOTHING is an issue until it is raised in a campaign or by office holders. (Are they biased? Yes, certainly -- but the MSM has always been biased against Democrats and Liberals, going back to the New Deal Era. Pete Hamill has recently introduced a collection of the writings of A.J Liebling. Some of you might read what someone like "Col." Bertie McCormick was like, or the later Hearst papers, in areas where they had no competition whatsoever. As I've said, when I grew up, NYC had 7 newspapers, only one -- The NY POST -- even leaning slightly to the left, with the TIMES being it's usual centrist/establishment mouthpiece and everything else being right to far right. If anyone knows the Phil Ochs song about the Daily NEWS, it was accurate, but there were three other papers far worse, the MIRROR, the WORLD-TELEGRAM, and the JOURNAL-AMERICAN.)

As I keep saying, we have to make this an issue, not in the blogosphere, where we talk only to the choir, but in ads -- print ads because you can't wave a tv ad at someone and let them read it in front of you -- and by simply going out and talking, constantly, to people, people who are already tempted by the Republican madness because they simply don't have the tools or background to see through the Limbaughs, Becks, and Palins.

If fifty ads popped up in large local newspapers throughout the country -- not in WaPo or the NYT which would be too expensive for the payback -- challenging local Republican incumbents to declare publicly whether they agreed with or renounced some of the Beck/Palin/tea-bagger statements, they would create their own story that the MSM would cover -- especially if they came from independent sources not directly connected with the Democratic Party.

[Nosurprise]

In terms of real negative impact on the world as a whole - Nader is the worst person of the decade. When Bush beat Gore in 2000, I saw Nader supporters literally cry at the realization that if not for Nader, Gore would have been president. Of course there were other contributing factors. But the biggest factor was the siphoning of votes from Gore by Nader. If not for Nader, we would not have had eight years of the most miserable president in our history.