2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumThe Undemocratic Side of Clinton Supporters.
For starters, the vindictiveness towards those who voice disagreement with the official line. Case in point: Matt Bruenig.
The Bruenig Firing: Civility As A Tool To Control Political Dissent
by Roqayah Chamseddine
EXCERPT...
On May 20, the progressive public policy organization, Demos, fired Matt Bruenig, a popular writer who covered poverty and inequality.
Demos firing of Bruenig was spurred, in part, by his sharp verbal knockdowns of columnist Joan Walsh, and Neera Tanden, the president of the Center for American Progress (CAP), both of whom are ardent Hillary Clinton supporters.
Bruenig described Tanden as a scumbag and sent heads spinning. Within a few hours, there was a virtual campaign engineered at stripping him of his position at Demos. There was more research done by liberals that day into calculating how much Bruenig makes, where he lives, and what kind of home he and his family reside in, than there was into the policies of Clinton.
SNIP...
Detractors claim Bruenigs behavior towards women was not only to blame for the loss of his job but that his conduct is an attribute of a larger, uncivilized left, and should they emulate such behavior then they too would suffer the same material repercussions.
These silencing tactics are not new, but theyve evolved with help from social media and a captivated audience that, especially when drama is involved, is unwilling to log off.
CONTINUED...
http://commondreams.org/views/2016/05/25/bruenig-firing-civility-tool-control-political-dissent
For voicing an opinion, a great researcher and writer for progress got smeared out of his job.
SFnomad
(3,473 posts)reddread
(6,896 posts)SFnomad
(3,473 posts)reddread
(6,896 posts)not applicable
SFnomad
(3,473 posts)Do you even understand what the 1st protects? And don't just say "freedom of the press", because that's not enough.
This person was fired by a private company.
reddread
(6,896 posts)Eko
(7,315 posts)only protects you from the government, not your private employer.
God bless you.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)They are totally within bounds. Jerry Falwell sued Larry Flynt for an awful libel, but he lost. Free speech includes satire, dirty words, and even Jerry's family.
reddread
(6,896 posts)"coup"
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Doesn't translate to peace bird.
Personally, I think Gruenig is a turd for how he writes about other people. The way he was treated in return, though, is totally wrong. The chorus are silent when it comes to that important part of democracy: the right to be heard.
1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)passing as political opinion/discourse, these days.
reddread
(6,896 posts)whats the word for it?
1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)But I would guess you are suggesting that good and talented bloggers on the issues of poverty and inequality are incapable of, or should be immune from, being abrasive assholes.
Cheese Sandwich
(9,086 posts)and pretty much got him fired.
1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)reddread
(6,896 posts)the janitors?
1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)Cheese Sandwich
(9,086 posts)/LOL just kidding
reddread
(6,896 posts)have a biscuit.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)It didn't happen. Didn't matter. Harm is done.
Anybody lose their job over it at ABCNNBCBSFoxFakesNews?
1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)How is that the least bit responsive to my comment?
Octafish
(55,745 posts)And it's completely true.
And if it weren't, you'd show it instead of demanding I write what you want -- which is undemocratic.
1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts){still wondering what the hell you are talking about ... but, knowing, asking will result in even more weird replies from you}
amborin
(16,631 posts)Cheese Sandwich
(9,086 posts)amborin
(16,631 posts)1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)Cheese Sandwich
(9,086 posts)Neera Tanden.
Also let's be clear, he used the word 'scumbag' as a reference to the Scumbag Steve meme. You know that one Scumbag Steve meme? It's an internet character who always does shitty selfish things. He called her "Scumbag Neera" to compare behavior her to Scumbag Steve.
1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)JonLeibowitz
(6,282 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)Making the Supers the center of attention, spotlighting their role in the horse race, prevents discussion from their true import: a brake on democracy. Then, some people like to hang around those who find democracy not all that great.
"I dont see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves." Henry Kissinger
An Open Letter to Henry Kissinger from One of Pinochet's Political Prisoners
The Last Man of the Junta
by FERNANDO A. TORRES
CounterPunch, DECEMBER 12, 2006
All of the original members of the military junta that overthrew Allende and his government with the knowledge and the direct support of the US government, are now gone.
Nixon is gone and Kissinger is left alone on this earth.
Now we will never know the number of secrets or the details that they took to their graves with them. Nor will we ever know the whereabouts of the missing ones every single one of them. I also wonder if justice will prevail and will catch up with Kissinger, the last man of the Junta? F.T.
An open letter to Henry Kissinger
I was not an "irresponsible" Chilean sir, but I did pay the heavy price of your words.
Mr. Henry Kissinger
Kissinger Associates.
New York
I do remember your reprimand to Chileans when they elected socialist Salvador Allende in 1970: "We cannot allow a country to go Marxist just because its people are irresponsible"
Although we were used to this kind of rhetoric coming out from the White House those years, we couldnt imagine that those opprobrious words of yours would eventually seal the future of Chile in one of the most horrendous episodes in Latin Americas history. Yes, I can say we underestimated you sir.
Bombs falling from the skies, towers and buildings destroyed, hundreds of people butchered. Thousands missing and soccer stadiums converted into concentrations camps. Do you remember this, your own 9/11?
Since day one; since before Allende was ratified by Chilean parliament as its legitimate President, you, Secretary of Sate and National Security Advisor, Mr. Kissinger, were plotting the overthrow of Allende. You conjured up the assassination of General Rene Schneider who supported the Chilean Constitution to provoke an early military coup.
You plotted a "two track" policy toward this small country aimed, on the one hand, to isolate Allende internationally and, on the other (more dirty) hand, to provoked a military coup through assassinations, political subversion and economic sabotage.
Your goal, Mr. Kissinger, in uniting military leaders in neighboring countries to pressure Chile, later became "Operation Condor", which was the coordination of the secret political police forces to carry out exchange of information and prisoners, kidnappings, torture, and political assassination such as the one against Orlando Letelier and his aide Ronni Moffit carried out in Washington DC by Chilean and Cuban terrorists lead by CIA agents Michael Townley and Novo Sampol [who later was convicted in Panama for various terrorists attack and an attempt to assassinate Fidel Castro, but was eventually freed at the behest of the United States, which pulled the strings on the outgoing puppet president, Mireya Moscoso].
You, Mr. Kissinger, and Nixon lied to Congress, given misleading information and assuring the US played no role in Chiles democracy deceased. You may know that at the time there was no danger of the elusive "weapons of mass destruction" but the "danger" of the spread of communism in the southern cone. You believed Chiles "irresponsible" people were prescribing a wrong example; Chile was a dangerous "dagger pointed at the heart of Antarctica," as you put it. A dagger that needs to be removed at any cost. Allende must be stopped even at the expense of democracy itself.
Because 9/11/1973 is of your absolute responsibility Mr. Kissinger, we the "irresponsible" people of Chile are naming you the Chilean version of Osama Bin laden, to say the least.
Mr. Kissinger, I was not an "irresponsible" Chilean because I was a 14 year old kid that couldnt vote, but I did have to fully pay the heavy and bloody price of your words, sir. However thinking about your role not only in Chile but in Indochina, East Timor, Cyprus, your betrayal of the Kurds in Iraq, your unconditional support of South Africas Apartheid, etc. etc., I can say something you cannot: my hands are clean.
Sincerely
FERNANDO A. TORRES
FERNANDO A. TORRES was a political prisoner in Chile when he was sent to exile in 1977. He is now a freelance journalist.
SOURCE: http://www.counterpunch.org/2006/12/12/the-last-man-of-the-junta/
Kissinger and his brethren are bringing this type of government -- where might and money make right -- to the United States today.
Consider Bush wins SCROTUS 5-4 and the Banksters rip off millions of homes and get off with fines for a fraction of what they stole. Disaster capitalism, Chile-Style is another name for the Austerity that We the People are going to have to get used to, even during a time of the greatest wealth in human history and its greatest concentration on record. Despite example after example of criminality on the part of the banks, from money laundering to prime rate fixing and worse, not a single bankster went to jail.
The only way to stop is to be aware of what is going on and to make our voices heard in opposition. While Kissinger and his bosses won't call their support for right-wing death squad tyranny for what it is for public consumption and modern marketing purposes, know it by its real name: fascism.
snowy owl
(2,145 posts)Let's all be civil to the powers as they slide us further down the olygarchical hierarchy. Unbelievable.
We were born of revolution and now we are all close to being good germans as we send off the babies of poor and minorities to continued war. And in the end, we will have done it to ourselves.
1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)The fired one wasn't making a political point (protected speech) ... he was name calling.
reddread
(6,896 posts)he should have been shot.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)By Chris Hedges
TruthDig.org, Posted on Jan 5, 2014
EXCERPT...
The most radical evil, as Hannah Arendt pointed out, is the political system that effectively crushes its marginalized and harassed opponents and, through fear and the obliteration of privacy, incapacitates everyone else. Our system of mass surveillance is the machine by which this radical evil will be activated. If we do not immediately dismantle the security and surveillance apparatus, there will be no investigative journalism or judicial oversight to address abuse of power. There will be no organized dissent. There will be no independent thought. Criticisms, however tepid, will be treated as acts of subversion. And the security apparatus will blanket the body politic like black mold until even the banal and ridiculous become concerns of national security.
I saw evil of this kind as a reporter in the Stasi state of East Germany. I was followed by men, invariably with crew cuts and wearing leather jackets, whom I presumed to be agents of the Stasithe Ministry for State Security, which the ruling Communist Party described as the shield and sword of the nation. People I interviewed were visited by Stasi agents soon after I left their homes. My phone was bugged. Some of those I worked with were pressured to become informants. Fear hung like icicles over every conversation.
The Stasi did not set up massive death camps and gulags. It did not have to. The Stasi, with a network of as many as 2 million informants in a country of 17 million, was everywhere. There were 102,000 secret police officers employed full time to monitor the populationone for every 166 East Germans. The Nazis broke bones; the Stasi broke souls. The East German government pioneered the psychological deconstruction that torturers and interrogators in Americas black sites, and within our prison system, have honed to a gruesome perfection.
[font color="green"]The goal of wholesale surveillance, as Arendt wrote in The Origins of Totalitarianism, is not, in the end, to discover crimes, but to be on hand when the government decides to arrest a certain category of the population. And because Americans emails, phone conversations, Web searches and geographical movements are recorded and stored in perpetuity in government databases, there will be more than enough evidence to seize us should the state deem it necessary. This information waits like a deadly virus inside government vaults to be turned against us. It does not matter how trivial or innocent that information is. In totalitarian states, justice, like truth, is irrelevant. [/font green]
The object of efficient totalitarian states, as George Orwell understood, is to create a climate in which people do not think of rebelling, a climate in which government killing and torture are used against only a handful of unmanageable renegades. The totalitarian state achieves this control, Arendt wrote, by systematically crushing human spontaneity, and by extension human freedom. It ceaselessly peddles fear to keep a population traumatized and immobilized. It turns the courts, along with legislative bodies, into mechanisms to legalize the crimes of state.
CONTINUED...
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_last_gasp_of_american_democracy_20140105
1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)reddread
(6,896 posts)first they came for the guys who said scumbag.
1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)Renew Deal
(81,861 posts)JonLeibowitz
(6,282 posts)I personally think it's more crude to advocate bombing oil-rich countries and making them pay us for the privilege.
One might even call that scumbaggery (yes I understand he was originally talking welfare no her comments on Libya)
BobbyDrake
(2,542 posts)You folks sent $25K to a man who still had a full-time source of income. #scammed
felix_numinous
(5,198 posts)but this message comes through loud and clear, this is a VERY bad direction for the country to take.