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billy.pilgrim
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Sermons

Unread post by billy.pilgrim » Mon Oct 14, 2019 9:41 am

Some sermons are different. This one sounds a lot more like jesus than any Billy Graham bullshit


https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-a ... ical-evil/


"Some people say the system does not work. They are wrong. The system works exactly as it is designed to work."
Trump: “We had the safest border in the history of our country - or at least recorded history. I guess maybe a thousand years ago it was even better.”

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Re: Sermons

Unread post by Vrede too » Mon Oct 14, 2019 12:44 pm

billy.pilgrim wrote:
Mon Oct 14, 2019 9:41 am
Some sermons are different. This one sounds a lot more like jesus than any Billy Graham bullshit

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-a ... ical-evil/

"Some people say the system does not work. They are wrong. The system works exactly as it is designed to work."
Thanks. Depressing, but a bit inspiring.

On March 22, 1905 Harper's Bazaar rejected Mark Twain's pro-peace short story, 'The War Prayer', as "not quite suited to a woman's magazine". Eight days later, Twain wrote to his friend Dan Beard, to whom he had read the story, "I don't think the prayer will be published in my time. None but the dead are permitted to tell the truth." Unfortunately, Twain had an exclusive contract with Harper & Brothers, so the 1,300-word classic tale remained unpublished until 1923 (13 years after his death). We reproduce it here:

The War Prayer

It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and sputtering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spreads of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country and invoked the God of Battles, beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpouring of fervid eloquence which moved every listener. 

It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteousness straightway got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety's sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way. 

Sunday morning came-next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their faces alight with material dreams-visions of a stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender!-then home from the war, bronzed heros, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! With the volunteers sat their dear ones, proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth to the field of honor, there to win for the flag or, failing, die the noblest of noble deaths. The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said; it was followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation -- "God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest, Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!" 

Then came the "long" prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was that an ever--merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them to crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor and glory - 

An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following him and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher's side and stood there, waiting. 

With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal,"Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!" 

The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside -- which the startled minister did -- and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said 

"I come from the Throne-bearing a message from Almighty God!" The words smote the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention. "He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd and grant it if such shall be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import-that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of-except he pause and think. 

"God's servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two- one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of His Who hearth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this-keep it in mind. If you beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbor's crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it. 

"You have heard your servant's prayer-the uttered part of it. I am commissioned by God to put into words the other part of it-that part which the pastor, and also you in your hearts, fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words: 'Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!' That is sufficient. The whole of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory-must follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God the Father fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen! 

"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle-be Thou near them! With them, in spirit, we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it-for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen. 

(After a pause) 

"Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits." 

It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.

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Re: Sermons

Unread post by Doug1943 » Wed Oct 16, 2019 7:23 pm

If only this anti-war message had been heeded by the British in 1939!!!

We would now be in the 80th year of the Thousand Year Reich. Millions of deaths would have been avoided. Europe would be united from Copenhagen to Vladivostok. The Asian, African and Middle Eastern lands would be at peace, under stern masters.

And we almost achieved this! In 1934 the Oxford Union (the influential debating society at Oxford University, where Britain's future ruling class is trained) passed the following resolution: "This House will not fight for King or Country." Only that old reactionary WInston Churchill was vocal in calling for rearmament ... the well-meaning peacelovers of all parties laughed at him. The Left paraded with signs demanding "Down with War and Fascism". Sadly, the Left and other peacelovers were not successful in preventing war ,,, Britain actually resisted Hitler's armies, instead of following the path of peace.

But it's good to see that the voice of peace is still alive!

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Re: Sermons

Unread post by Vrede too » Fri Oct 18, 2019 5:46 pm

Doug1943 wrote:
Wed Oct 16, 2019 7:23 pm
If only this anti-war message had been heeded by the British in 1939!!! ...
Very impressive, a Godwin's law loser with your "very first" post.

Mark Twain, perhaps our greatest author, journalist and speaker ever, was likely thinking about America's betrayal and brutal repression of the Filipino people when he wrote The War Prayer in 1905. It was eerily predictive of the 1906 Moro Crater Massacre, and the subsequent decades of repressive colonialism.

Image
U.S. soldiers pose with Moro dead after the battle

In response to that atrocious US war crime, Twain then wrote Incident in the Philippines.

Funny that you mention "The Left". Here is America the fascists and other pre-war isolationists were righties like you, and leftists had already been fighting fascism in Spain as part of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade for years.

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Re: Sermons

Unread post by Doug1943 » Sun Oct 20, 2019 12:28 pm

I see. No one can mention the Second World War (which apparently in your mind equals 'Hitler') for the first time, or someone will shout "Godwin's Law!"
I think there is a problem here.

If what Twain was saying was, some wars are bad ... but some are good... then this prayer is a poor expression of that idea. This prayer is in fact a simple pacifist appeal ... don't kill the children of the other side. But in fact, although the Left paraded up and down in the 30s with signs saying "Down With War and Fascism", in fact it took war to destroy fascism. But this appeal would prevent us from killing German boys, which had to be done.

As for the Phillipines ... I fully support the Anti-Imperialist League of the time. The US should not attempt to rule underdeveloped nations, even if there are benefits to imperialist rule of backward countries, as Karl Marx asserted there were.

As for the Abraham Lincoln Brigade ... I have nothing but admiration for anyone who went to Spain to fight fascism, or rather, admiration for their anti-fascist motives and their courage, if not for their overall political judgement, since many of them were Communists.

It has to be noted that the people who ran the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, and many of its ordinary members, were also great enthusiasts for the Red Fascism of the Soviet Union. Their anti-totalitiarianism was very selective, although it should be said that not only die-hard Stalinists were supportive of the Soviet tyranny, but also many liberals were -- certainly their flagship journals The New Republic and The Nation were.

And the Communist role in Spain was not limited to fighting fascists. The Communists also killed the dissident Communists of the POUM, and anarchists. The honest socialist George Orwell describes all this very well in his wondeful Homage to Catalonia, which everyone should read.

And the same sort of people who fought fascism in Spain, were picketing the White House to prevent the US from fighting fascism. Their opposition to the war against fascism began on 23 August 1939, and lasted until 22 June 1941. Care to comment on the significance of those two dates? (Hint: the second one was six months before Pearl Harbor.)

So please spare me any hypocritical assertions of your moral supremacy.

~And by the way ... those boys wading ashore at Normandy were all white -- it was still largely a segregated army. And if you had questioned any of them about their attitude towards gays and transexuals .. whoa... So please please please don't equate those men with the human garbage of 'Anti-Fa'.

Oh yes: it is true that the Right in the US was pretty isolationist before (and even after, for a while) WWII. But do note that although it was necessary to fight WWII, and all credit to FDR for getting us into it ... the fact is, he got us into it through executive action behind the backs of Congress, setting a terrible precident which resulted in Johnson's getting us into Vietnam in the same sneaky way. Maybe it was necessary, but it was a very mixed blessing if it was. During the Vietnam War, a then-Leftist wrote a very good review of a pro-FDR book which went into detail on how the US became a President-controlled, rather than a Congress-controlled, society with respect to foreign wars. We're still experiencing the down side of this today.

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Re: Sermons

Unread post by Vrede too » Sun Oct 20, 2019 1:09 pm

Doug1943 wrote:
Sun Oct 20, 2019 12:28 pm
I see. No one can mention the Second World War (which apparently in your mind equals 'Hitler') for the first time, or someone will shout "Godwin's Law!"
I think there is a problem here.

Agreed, "there is a problem here." In your mind the attack on "the British in 1939" does not equal 'Hitler'. Weird.

If what Twain was saying was, some wars are bad ... but some are good... then this prayer is a poor expression of that idea. This prayer is in fact a simple pacifist appeal ... don't kill the children of the other side. But in fact, although the Left paraded up and down in the 30s with signs saying "Down With War and Fascism", in fact it took war to destroy fascism. But this appeal would prevent us from killing German boys, which had to be done.

Actually, Twain's War Prayer is more of a condemnation of the bloodlust shown by all sides during war, and the religious cheerleading for it. He does not go so far as to specifically condemn all wars. That's just your sensitivity.

He has a point, liberation included carpet bombing, Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, etc., along with the necessary good that was done.

In fact, Twain was explicitly NOT "pacifist". He was instead Anti-imperialist, apparently something you ascribe to but without properly crediting Twain.


As for the Phillipines ... I fully support the Anti-Imperialist League of the time. The US should not attempt to rule underdeveloped nations, even if there are benefits to imperialist rule of backward countries, as Karl Marx asserted there were.

Cool, that was the context of The War Prayer.

As for the Abraham Lincoln Brigade ... I have nothing but admiration for anyone who went to Spain to fight fascism, or rather, admiration for their anti-fascist motives and their courage,

Yet, you only mentioned supposed "Left" opposition to WW2 when it was really more righties here.

if not for their overall political judgement, since many of them were Communists.

And anarchists.

It has to be noted that the people who ran the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, and many of its ordinary members, were also great enthusiasts for the Red Fascism of the Soviet Union.

No such thing. By definition fascism is rightwing. You seem to recognize this by correctly switching up to "totalitiarianism [sic]", which can be right or left.

Their anti-totalitiarianism was very selective, although it should be said that not only die-hard Stalinists were supportive of the Soviet tyranny, but also many liberals were -- certainly their flagship journals The New Republic and The Nation were.

It's a shame that the democratic nations ceded external support of the Republic to Stalin. We'll never know what might have happened if they had instead supported the "premature antifascists". Might Hitler have been duly warned and stymied?

And the Communist role in Spain was not limited to fighting fascists. The Communists also killed the dissident Communists of the POUM, and anarchists. The honest socialist George Orwell describes all this very well in his wondeful Homage to Catalonia, which everyone should read.

Done, a Civil War tour of Republican Barcelona, too.

And the same sort of people who fought fascism in Spain, were picketing the White House to prevent the US from fighting fascism. Their opposition to the war against fascism began on 23 August 1939, and lasted until 22 June 1941. Care to comment on the significance of those two dates? (Hint: the second one was six months before Pearl Harbor.)

How can I respond to vague, unsourced blanket statements?

So please spare me any hypocritical assertions of your moral supremacy.

Wussy projection and hypocrisy seems to be your go-to style when you're floundering. YOU chose to only cite "Left" opposition to the war when we both know about the pro-fascist and other rightwing opposition to the war. I merely set straight the record that YOU twisted.

~And by the way ... those boys wading ashore at Normandy were all white -- it was still largely a segregated army. And if you had questioned any of them about their attitude towards gays and transexuals .. whoa... So please please please don't equate those men with the human garbage of 'Anti-Fa'.

Ummm, of course they were anti-fascist, whatever other attributes you ascribe to them. You're just being silly.

Fascinating that you react so strongly to the people opposing America's current fascists. Hmmm.


Oh yes: it is true that the Right in the US was pretty isolationist before (and even after, for a while) WWII. But do note that although it was necessary to fight WWII, and all credit to FDR for getting us into it ... the fact is, he got us into it through executive action behind the backs of Congress, setting a terrible precident

:?: :?: :?: YOU began this tangent by defending anti-fascism. It's kind of odd that you're now whining about the process of being anti-fascist. Churchill also exercised what undemocratic tools he could.

which resulted in Johnson's getting us into Vietnam in the same sneaky way.

Odd that you single out LBJ. FDR's pre-war deceits and machinations are comparable to Truman-Ike-JFK and LBJ re Vietnam.

Maybe it was necessary, but it was a very mixed blessing if it was. During the Vietnam War, a then-Leftist wrote a very good review of a pro-FDR book which went into detail on how the US became a President-controlled, rather than a Congress-controlled, society with respect to foreign wars. We're still experiencing the down side of this today.

It's consistently the leftwing of the Dems and a few libertarians that oppose this and demand adherence to the War Powers Act. Other Repugs only object when the POTUS is Dem. I side with those leftwing Dems and like to think that maybe I would have gone to Spain. I'm no Dem, and you have my blessing in criticizing the more conservative ones like LBJ on war issues.

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Re: Sermons

Unread post by billy.pilgrim » Tue Oct 22, 2019 3:31 pm

Johnson got us into Vietnam?
I probably read a different book
Trump: “We had the safest border in the history of our country - or at least recorded history. I guess maybe a thousand years ago it was even better.”

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Re: Sermons

Unread post by Doug1943 » Tue Oct 22, 2019 3:42 pm

billy.pilgrim wrote:
Tue Oct 22, 2019 3:31 pm
Johnson got us into Vietnam?
I probably read a different book
It was Lyndon Johnson who turned a limited commitment into a full scale war, without a full debate and declaration of war by Congress. As you may know, there is a debate about whether Kennedy, had he not been assassinated by that Socialist, would have done the same. My guess is that he would have.

The fellow who wrote that piece was a Leftist at the time (1968, I think) and made a point that was not popular then, namely, that it was FDR who maneuvered the US into the Second World War. I've known that for a long time, but thought that it was an unfortunately necessity. And in fact I still think that, but I now would emphasize the 'unfortunate' part a lot more.

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Re: Sermons

Unread post by Vrede too » Tue Oct 22, 2019 4:23 pm

billy.pilgrim wrote:
Tue Oct 22, 2019 3:31 pm
Johnson got us into Vietnam?
I probably read a different book
:lol: Or library.
Doug1943 wrote:
Tue Oct 22, 2019 3:42 pm
It was Lyndon Johnson who turned a limited commitment into a full scale war,

:?: It was already "a full scale war," with one side funded entirely by the US since before the French got kicked out. Your White American paternalism is showing - only GI lives matter.

without a full debate and declaration of war by Congress....

Yep, Tonkin Gulf Respolution, just like Shrub's AUMF.

(vague, still unsourced claim ignored)
The Pentagon Papers made clear that it was a succession of admins that knew we couldn't "win" and still lied and lied in order to not appear weak. I've got no problem with raking LBJ over the coals, but YOUR partisan selectivity is detestable when the topic is the graveyard of 50K+ Americans and millions of Vietnamese.

Still can't admit that Twain was explicitly NOT "pacifist"?
Still can't admit that by definition fascism is rightwing?

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Re: Sermons

Unread post by Doug1943 » Tue Oct 22, 2019 4:42 pm

Where do we disagree? You're not a typical liberal, and I'm not a typical conservative, and we probably have various points of accidental agreement. (I'm a supporter of tovarisch Tulsi Gabbardsky, for example.) But I'm definitely a Rightwinger, a nasty hardline conservative. (And an old white Southern heteronormal male, to boot!) So I hope I can give all the Lefties here an excuse for a good therapeutic Two-minute Hate from time to time. However, it will have to be on target for what I actually believe. I can't speak for anyone else, and I won't assume that because someone is a socialist or progressive, that they are automatically responsible for what any other person calling themselves a socialist or a progressive says or does.

On Spain. If you've read Orwell's Homage to Catalonia (his very moving description of revolutionary Barcelona played a role in making me a revolutionary socialist in my foolish youth), then you'll know that the International Brigade was run by the Communist Party, and most of its members were pro-Communist or Communists. Apparently, it may have had a small number (half a dozen?) of anarchists, but most American anarchists signed up with the anarchist militias. More details here: http://www.albavolunteer.org/2017/08/fo ... civil-war/ And of course the Communists and anarchists came into armed conflict, with the latter being suppressed by the former. The head of the POUM (Workers Party of Marxist Unification) which ended up in a GPU prison and was executed. (I assume you know all this. If not, the Wiked article on Nin has the bare bones, so to speak: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A ... P%C3%A9rez)

As to whether fascism is 'right wing', it's really a pointless semantic argument. I'll go along with that, if you'll go along with the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia being 'left wing'. How much energy has been wasted in stupid arguments about this! There is a favorite trope among some people on my side that Hitler was a Leftist, because, you know, National SOCIALIST German WORKERS Party. Ridiculous. (Hitler was actually a 'Keynesian', and a very successful one at that. If he had not gotten into a war, he'd probably be a great hero in Germany today.)

I am perfectly happy to accept that someone can be a very thorough socialist, and not a totalitarian or admirer of one-party states or gulags. I would however hope that they would be very sensitive to the problems that may arise when the government becomes the sole employer, even with good intentions.

Anyway, with respect to Spain, the democracies, including the USA, should have gone in with all four feet on the side of the Republic, just as the British and French should have prepared themselves to invade Germany at the first excuse when Hitler was made Chancellor -- and he gave them an excuse. That old reactionary Churchill said it all, and at the time, but no one in Britain, on the Left or the Right, wanted to hear. Instead the young men of Oxford voted not to fight for King or Country, an outcome which no doubt gave great pleasure in Berlin and Tokyo. Both Right and Left had their heads in the sand.

And I'll give you a point you didn't raise: not only were most of the leaders of the Right 'isolationists', some of them, for a while, weren't all that anti-Hitler. After all, he was crushing the Communists and Socialists and the unions. Nor did his anti-Semitism bother them very much either -- a lot of the Right, before the war, was anti-Semitic (not in a "gas the Jews" way, but in "not in our country club" way.) Right up until 1939, a lot of people on the Right hoped that Hitler would invade the Soviet Union and leave the democracies alone. There is a famous quote by one Senator Harry Truman to this effect. “If we see that Germany is winning the war, we ought to help Russia; and if that Russia is winning, we ought to help Germany, and in that way let them kill as many as possible.” Nice.

On those dates: the first date is the date of the Hitler-Stalin Pact. All over the world, the Communist Parties instantly stopped agitating for military defense against Hitler, and began denouncing "imperialism" and "imperialist war". The influence of the French Communist Party among the ranks fo the French Army probably contributed to France's collapse. The second date is the day that Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. On that day, the Communist Parties immediately dropped their oppostion to the war, and began clamouring for the democracies to fight Hitler. There was a "The Yanks Are Not Coming" picket line (a CP front) around the White House which literally closed down the next day. Stalin's songbird, Pete Seeger, had to quickly pack away all his anti-war songs.

But I should say this: I can understand why a young person would become a Communist or a sympathyzer of the Communists in the 1930s. They seemed to be the only serious force against advancing fascism. Their motives were not bad. It is the great tragedy of the 20th Century that the socialist movement, which, however misguided their economic program, had been libertarian and democratic, became in ints majority totalitarian. Just an accident of history.

Anyway, I don't see much more of anything substantive to argue about. I'm sure we'll find other issues.

Oh yes: on the boys crawling through the surf at Normandy. Their general social attitudes towards Blacks, Jews, women and homosexuals were probably almost identical to those of the German boys shooting at them. They probably weren't even very consciously "anti-fascist", since that had a certain definite meaning at the time, and most of the young men in the infantry were not very politically sophisticated. (And, believe it or not, when the Nazis wanted to make propaganda against America, they included, among America's deplorable habits, its custom of lynching Blacks. Life is complicated.)

In fact, the average Joe on all sides was fighting for his country, not for any ideology. Stalin dropped the internationalism of the Old Bolsheviks and replaced it with Russian nationalism. Not 'Za Kommunismu' but 'Za rodinu, za Stalina!'. (For homeland, for Stalin!

George Orwell, one of my favorite socialists, explores this point at length in his essay The Lion and the Unicorn, which all politically-minded people should read. Easily available on the web, for example here: https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-or ... sh-genius/

Whoops: just saw your reply. The US ruling elite had a very defective understanding of the world (they still do, to the extent that there is one). They should have handled the anti-colonialist revolution very differently ... they could have ripped it out of Moscow's hands, turned Mao and Ho into Asian Titos, could have undercut Moscow in the Third World elsewhere as well. But they didn't know how to do that, and it was easy to fall back on what the more cynical military used to say in Vietnam, when told we had to "win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people" -- which was, "Hell, get 'em by the balls and the hearts and minds witll follow".

In particular, they (our rulers) don't understand national feeling, national pride. When Hillary, not a stupid woman, went to Mexico as Sec of State, some weeny advisor made sure she liad flowers on the graves of the American soldiers who are burined outside Mexico City, who died in our grab of half the country. No doubt thought it would make a good pic for campaign purposes. She should then also have visited the shrine to the Ninoes Heroes, the boys who fought to the death against the invading Americans. But to Americans, other peoples are just two-dimensional artefacts. (This isn't a moral criticism: it's just a function of our history and above all our geography. But it's going to make our slide down into Number Two in the world very very fraught._)

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Re: Sermons

Unread post by Vrede too » Tue Oct 22, 2019 5:20 pm

Don’t be such a victim, I’ve challenged you on particular facts.

“Blah, blah, blah, Stalin was bad.” So? As you admit, the “democracies” deliberately created the opportunity for Stalin by abandoning the Republic. Of course, as you also say there was a strong fascist undercurrent in many of them, until September 1939.

Don’t be such a crybaby. You stupidly chose to post “Red Fascism”. I merely corrected you. Of course the COMMUNIST Khmer Rouge in Cambodia was 'left wing’, but it’s wussy of you to desperately deflect to getting me to “admit” it as cover for YOUR flub.
Doug1943 wrote:
Tue Oct 22, 2019 4:42 pm
... And I'll give you a point you didn't raise: not only were most of the leaders of the Right 'isolationists', some of them, for a while, weren't all that anti-Hitler. After all, he was crushing the Communists and Socialists and the unions. Nor did his anti-Semitism bother them very much either -- a lot of the Right, before the war, was anti-Semitic (not in a "gas the Jews" way, but in "not in our country club" way.) Right up until 1939, a lot of people on the Right hoped that Hitler would invade the Soviet Union and leave the democracies alone. There is a famous quote by one Senator Harry Truman to this effect. “If we see that Germany is winning the war, we ought to help Russia; and if that Russia is winning, we ought to help Germany, and in that way let them kill as many as possible.” Nice....
I didn’t???
Vrede too wrote:
Fri Oct 18, 2019 5:46 pm
Funny that you mention "The Left". Here in America the fascists and other pre-war isolationists were righties like you, and leftists had already been fighting fascism in Spain as part of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade for years.

Image
Seems to me that I explicitly cited American fascists.

More “Blah, blah, blah, Stalin was bad.” So? I’m no fan of him or communism. You’re putting a lot of effort into straw men.

Again:
Vrede too wrote:
Sun Oct 20, 2019 1:09 pm
Ummm, of course they (the GIs) were anti-fascist, whatever other attributes you ascribe to them. You're just being silly.

Fascinating that you react so strongly to the people opposing America's current fascists. Hmmm.
Either knowingly or de facto, they were anti-fascist.

I agree with your thoughts on our blind and self-destructive imperialism.

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billy.pilgrim
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Re: Sermons

Unread post by billy.pilgrim » Thu Oct 24, 2019 12:40 am

Doug1943 wrote:
Tue Oct 22, 2019 3:42 pm
billy.pilgrim wrote:
Tue Oct 22, 2019 3:31 pm
Johnson got us into Vietnam?
I probably read a different book
It was Lyndon Johnson who turned a limited commitment into a full scale war, without a full debate and declaration of war by Congress. As you may know, there is a debate about whether Kennedy, had he not been assassinated by that Socialist, would have done the same. My guess is that he would have.

The fellow who wrote that piece was a Leftist at the time (1968, I think) and made a point that was not popular then, namely, that it was FDR who maneuvered the US into the Second World War. I've known that for a long time, but thought that it was an unfortunately necessity. And in fact I still think that, but I now would emphasize the 'unfortunate' part a lot more.

Tonkin? What choice did LBJ have?

I would have to place most of the blame for Vietnam, after the French were kicked out, on Truman and Ike.
Trump: “We had the safest border in the history of our country - or at least recorded history. I guess maybe a thousand years ago it was even better.”

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Vrede too
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Re: Sermons

Unread post by Vrede too » Thu Oct 24, 2019 9:48 am

billy.pilgrim wrote:
Thu Oct 24, 2019 12:40 am
Tonkin? What choice did LBJ have?

I would have to place most of the blame for Vietnam, after the French were kicked out, on Truman and Ike.
He could have chosen to not provoke an NV attack with acts of war, and not to exaggerate and lie about what did happen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_T ... _the_event

I see it as a continuum of responsibility.

Truman reneging on FDR’s promises of independence.
Ike allowing the national referendum to be cancelled and fully funding the French.
JFK expanding our “advisory” combat role.
LBJ making it an overt combat role.
Nixon continuing the doomed effort for years and invading Cambodia.
All of them for their support of and influence over several corrupt puppet governments in the South.

Lots of details I’m not mentioning, but I would struggle to blame one POTUS more than another. I sure wouldn’t adopt Doug1943’s blindly partisan idiocy that the War began in 1965 under LBJ.

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billy.pilgrim
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Re: Sermons

Unread post by billy.pilgrim » Thu Oct 24, 2019 10:11 am

Vrede too wrote:
Thu Oct 24, 2019 9:48 am
billy.pilgrim wrote:
Thu Oct 24, 2019 12:40 am
Tonkin? What choice did LBJ have?

I would have to place most of the blame for Vietnam, after the French were kicked out, on Truman and Ike.
He could have chosen to not provoke an NV attack with acts of war, and not to exaggerate and lie about what did happen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_T ... _the_event

I see it as a continuum of responsibility.

Truman reneging on FDR’s promises of independence.
Ike allowing the national referendum to be cancelled and fully funding the French.
JFK expanding our “advisory” combat role.
LBJ making it an overt combat role.
Nixon continuing the doomed effort for years and invading Cambodia.
All of them for their support of and influence over several corrupt puppet governments in the South.

Lots of details I’m not mentioning, but I would struggle to blame one POTUS more than another. I sure wouldn’t adopt Doug1943’s blindly partisan idiocy that the War began in 1965 under LBJ.
LBJ could have been honest and lost the election - his domestic interest were more important, but yeah, you're right.

I put most of the blame on Truman and then Ike
Trump: “We had the safest border in the history of our country - or at least recorded history. I guess maybe a thousand years ago it was even better.”

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Vrede too
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Re: Sermons

Unread post by Vrede too » Thu Oct 24, 2019 10:31 am

billy.pilgrim wrote:
Thu Oct 24, 2019 10:11 am
LBJ could have been honest and lost the election - his domestic interest were more important, but yeah, you're right.

I put most of the blame on Truman and then Ike
Do you think that honesty and or silence about what did and didn't happen in the Tonkin Gulf on those 2 August 1964 nights would have cost LBJ his landslide in November? It's not like there was a massive public push for fully invading Vietnam.

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O Really
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Re: Sermons

Unread post by O Really » Thu Oct 24, 2019 10:46 am

Political and public support of any action in Vietnam - from "advisors" to invaders arose from the fundamentally faulty premise of the domino theory and fear of the boogie-man commies. Then, as now, a well-crafted lie, widely and constantly spread, can get you a long way.

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Re: Sermons

Unread post by billy.pilgrim » Sat Oct 26, 2019 5:28 am

Vrede too wrote:
Thu Oct 24, 2019 10:31 am
billy.pilgrim wrote:
Thu Oct 24, 2019 10:11 am
LBJ could have been honest and lost the election - his domestic interest were more important, but yeah, you're right.

I put most of the blame on Truman and then Ike
Do you think that honesty and or silence about what did and didn't happen in the Tonkin Gulf on those 2 August 1964 nights would have cost LBJ his landslide in November? It's not like there was a massive public push for fully invading Vietnam.
Could be so. I don't see other motivations for his reaction.

Whatever the reasons around LBJs escalation, there were 2 presidents before him who started that war. Truman turned his back on our allies and then there's Ike. Ike restated a war that was signed sealed and over.

Ike did so much wrong that he doesn't get credit for.


Imagine if we had expressed our freedom loving American values and supported the Cuban and Vietnamese people's fight against their corrupt governments and against their colonial rulers.
Trump: “We had the safest border in the history of our country - or at least recorded history. I guess maybe a thousand years ago it was even better.”

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