Sunday, May 17, 2009

The State of Blogs and Blogging/Open Thread

I'm curious how people feel about their personal blogs, in this period when Twitter and Facebook are so popular. Potentially you can reach more people than with your blog.

I think it is a hard period to just start blogging. I think if you have a new blog, you should visit other blogs, and recruit an audience.

I think trading links is important. The more you are linked to, the higher you are on Google. I try to plan ahead my posts. If I know an event like elections in El Salvador are coming up, I'll post on the elections. People will be Googling the elections.

Is debate important to you?

This is an open thread. Ok to raise any topic.

RENEGADE EYE

52 comments:

SecondComingOfBast said...

I started to post this comment on the previous thread, but decided to post it here instead, so here goes.

Wow. You just jolted me with something you said about China, and its like a fog lifted. You should be able to see it for yourself. Socialists, I think, for the most part assume that time and history moves in a linear fashion. I think it moves in more of a circular fashion, like the universe itself. But there are disruptions, due to the chaotic nature of the universe. Because of this, time and history, if charted on a graph, would have sharp peaks followed by drops, followed by more peaks.

That's why no system will last forever, without interruption. It is simply unsustainable on a permanent basis. There will always be periods of chaotic upheaval, followed by periods of adjustments. We tend to refer to them as "Dark Ages".

Nothing lasts forever, but it always reaches out and drags you right back in, eventually. There was never a more capitalist system than ancient Babylon at its absolute height. It, like Britain, was a "nation of shopkeepers".

Also, I think socialism, not in theory but in practice has much, much more in common with feudalism than it might be comfortable for socialists to acknowledge. That seems to be the history, and it fits it well, only without the veneer of a titled nobility. Even at that, it is not too far removed.

So when you say that China is creating the seeds that might eventually destroy it by creating an "industrial working class", it is just following the formula of feudalism creating capitalism. So the good news for capitalists is, we can pretty much look forward to that being the case with Cuba, and Venezuela, etc.

After all, were those nations themselves ever truly capitalists, or were they feudal in nature?

More to the point, could socialism and it's bratty, obnoxious little brother communism be viewed more accurately as the natural phase between feudalism and capitalism?

I say yes. I'm sure of it. Look at it this way. Socialism is a method to phase over between feudalism and capitalism, and can go in either direction, from or to feudalism from or to capitalism.

Communism, the obnoxious, bratty little brother of socialism, is a temper tantrum thrown as a means of keeping to or returning to the feudal state.

So, nuff said.

tony said...

i always thought Socialism was the sensible ,mild-mannered stay- at -home; little brother of Communism.Pha! Families!
But,wait a minute!Whose The Daddy?
As to blogging.......its the expressive,creative Big Brother (if you'll pardon the expression)of it's little sibling facebook..............

troutsky said...

I think you refer to something called "uneven development", that is, while we can say the world is dominated by a capitalist economic system there are still pockets where feudal relations remain and a few where socialist relations are advancing.

As to history and the universe being circular, is this Hindu?

Blogging is valuable to me but most of the working class is to harried and stressed to get involved, just like democracy in general. Facebook and Twitter are Mc Blog drive-through windows.

SecondComingOfBast said...

Troutsky-

That's a good question. I guess that would fit with Hindu philosophy. But you can see it for yourself, what I mean by history looking like successive peaks and dips on a chart. There have been many Dark Ages, not just one. There are at different times, declines, followed by periods of stagnation, followed by rises-then another drop, etc.

You have to look objectively to see the feudal nature of most forms of socialism/communism, not in theory but where it always inevitably seems to lead in actual practice.

I turned that comment into my own blog post, you are welcome to come and comment on it, as is anybody. I promise I won't bite.

SecondComingOfBast said...

As for Twitter and Facebook, they are actually two different things, though similar. The worse thing about Twitter is it caters to the rich and famous. Sure, if you put enough effort into it, you can build up a shitload of followers. The only thing about it is, how many of your followers are really following you.

No one sees your replies to other people except the people you are directly replying to. So, unless a famous person responds to you, and they do so on a consistent basis, you can tweet all day long and still remain an obscure presence.

That being said, its still fun.

As for Facebook, you have a better chance to build an audience there, but you still have to put a lot more time and effort into it than it is probably worth.

It, like MySpace, is more for social networking.

Both can be fun hobbies and means of self-expression, or simple vanity projects, but don't expect to set the world on fire with any of it. For that matter, blogging is a hard thing to really make an impact with. For every good blog, you have tens of thousands of bullshit sites to have to wade through, and getting updated on sites like Technorati is about like having a rotten tooth and pulling it yourself. It's a losing proposition from day one.

Anonymous said...

As you know, I don't like to trade links and have no interest in ever seeing my blog become "popular". I generally delete most of my posts. I blog in order to "think", and it's the subsequent "debate" that typically rewards my effort, especially if someone like mr. ducky shows up. I was for many years a "blog-less" blogger, and will likely return to it one day.

As for Facebook, I use it to keep tabs on my kids while they're away at college. I hate all the stupid 'friend-related' updates and block most of them and have disabled the "chat" function. My Facebook presence is minimal. And Twitter is absolutely the stupidest functions of Facebook on steroids. Nobody cares what you're doing right at this precise moment in time, REALLY, unless you're "close" family (and NOT your 500-1,000 Facebook friends).

But it's obvious that you, Ren, blog in order to circulate your opinions and gain political support for them... you really don't seem interested in exploring their validity. You seem to only seek their "affirmation" and "perpetuation." But regardless, your opinions are interesting... and fun to attempt to debunk.

K. said...

The reality is that one reaches more people with Twitter and Facebook: I have 45 blog followers and over a hundred Facebook friends.

But on my blogs, I can actually write and develop my thoughts, whereas Facebook is mostly a means of keeping in touch with people I already know. Facebook is fine for reestablishing old friendships, but blogging is much better for meeting new people (which, now that I think about it, is probably Ren's point).

Lew Scannon said...

In my opinion Twitter and facebook are completely different from blogging. With blogging, I generally will write about something I've read, and don't feel the need to censor myself for fear of alienating my non-political friends. For those I have a Facebook account, but only because I like to read every mundane thought that crosses their alcohol soaked brains.

Frank Partisan said...

I know many bloggers are spending their time at Facebook, but keep one leg on their blogs.

Pagan: Feudalism is about you're thirsty and I'm cold. I have a canteen that I give you, and you give me a bear skin. I don't know if that is fair or not. Capitalism is based on this much money will buy this item. That is no different under socialism atleast for quite awhile. The creation of the working class, that gets paid in money, is from capitalism, not feudalism.

The Chinese Revolution was led by peasantry. They expropriated their masters. It was a bureaucratic society, but not feudalism. Mao put down workers, who took over factories.

There is no socialism in practice. No such thing as a single socialist country.

I accept just about everyone Facebook recommends.

On Facebook you will be able to have your blog posts, sent to every friend.

Tony: Blogging plays an important role politically. The journalism has literally changed the world, when bloggers unite. The major reporters, are now plagiarizing the sheet writers.

Troutsky: Not even Napal is really feudal.

FJ: I don't blog to perpetuate my views, but to test them.

I'm more insidious than how you describe me. The dialectic is the best triangulator I know. I put Bill Clinton to shame.

I'm happiest when I'm looking down on both the left and right.

Lew: I have some of the same problems with Facebook. My friends list has too many hammer and sickles for me to hide politically. People are more tolerant than you at times believe. My fear was that I have different worlds, that until Facebook never really met.

Killian: I'm relatively new to Facebook. My page is eclectic, people from politics, art, sports etc.

SecondComingOfBast said...

That's a good point about your blog posts being seen on Facebook. It's the same with MySpace, though I rarely mess with that anymore. Most people that use those sites use them as vanity pages, and they aren't interested in really anyone else, it's about "hey look at me and what I'm doing, what I think, what I like and how cute I am."

It gives the illusion of familiarity, in reality the more time a person spends on-line on such sites the more obscure they are in real life.

You have to really be a prolific blogger to make an impact on a social networking site, and I just don't have the time for that.

SecondComingOfBast said...

Also, you are not giving my theory enough consideration or credit. Would you not describe Russia before the Revolution as more of a feudal society than a capitalist one? What about China? Out of all the communist or socialist countries that have ever existed, how many of them were advanced capitalist states? Now, how many of them were either feudal states, or at least retained strong and pervasive elements of feudalism?

This would include Eastern Europe, by the way. For that matter, Western Europe, which some would describe with some legitimacy as "quasi-socialist", has a strongly feudalistic history and tradition.

And it is precisely that kind of quasi-socialism which is catching hold in America, not the kind you advocate. Here, Marxism is an alien way of thinking. In the US, the closest region that approaches feudalism is the Deep South, a region which tends to take in much more in terms of federal dollars in comparison to what it adds to the federal coffers. There, the reaction to socialism is a knee-jerk reaction, with the major objections being to the European quasi-socialist system. There is a fear that it would lead to Cuban or Soviet style socialism. In reality, they are closer to that than they might care to think, minus the free health care.

Really, the fear is that socialism as they define it would lead to the end of their independence and semi-autonomy, something they've never really had to begin with. Freedom and independence in an interdependent nation and world is a facade at best. They found that out the hard way in the aftermath of the Civil War, and what was the result of that? Pay attemtion now, this is important-

That feudal system was dismantled when the big plantations were EXPROPRIATED by carpetbaggers and former slaves with the aid of the federal government. The southern tradition comes by its aversion to socialism honestly.

What they have in the Deep South now though is a kind of Southern Fried Socialism run by the Southern Baptist Convention with the aid of socially conservative politicians, and the kind of economic conservatives who would declare that "those who don't work, don't eat."

Or they're trailer trash.

Sure, it's more outwardly feudal than socialist, but what is the real distinction.

Finally, yes, I understand that feudalism paved the way to capitalism. I just say that socialism, in its practical applications, and the reality of its practice, is actually an attempt-call it a subconscious drive-to return to feudalism.

I'm not talking about the theory, I'm talking about what turns out to be the reality in every socialist state or federation that has thus far ever existed.

Prove me wrong with history, not hopes and theory.

Ducky's here said...

That feudal system was dismantled when the big plantations were EXPROPRIATED by carpetbaggers and former slaves with the aid of the federal government. The southern tradition comes by its aversion to socialism honestly.

----------------------------

Absolutely and they still think the plantation system was viable. They should have been thankful

SecondComingOfBast said...

Ducky, I've known all kinds of people in my life, and I have yet to meet a single person who wants to return to the slave days. Even most Klan people don't want that, even the most virulently racist ones, so I'm not sure where you're getting that. Most of the modern pro-confederacy sympathies, and devotion to such imagery as the confederate flag, is more of a statement against the federal government than it is a racist statement for most people, though granted racism plays a role for many of them.

My point is the irony of how deeply ingrained the conservative religious tradition is within the southern psyche, and how it pervades everything from politics to culture. Southerners have for the most part felt dispossessed ever since the days of Reconstruction and under the thumb of the federal government. That's why when the Democratic leadership promoted the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, so many Democratic politicians went over to the Republican Party as a reaction to the anger expressed by their constituents.

Yes, its racist, but its also and mainly a reaction to the federal governments intrusions into the states sovereignty. I am not defending it either, just explaining it.

It's a backwards system, like feudalism, which is basically an agrarian system, but it is also comparable to socialism as far as the cultural pressure goes. Back in the Jim Crow days and on up into the early days of the civil rights movement, it was like they had their own little mini KGB's in the form not just of the Klan, but others such as elected officials and even respected private citizens with influence, keeping everybody in line, and nobody even thought about going against the system.

That's why I say they weren't really as independent and free as they liked to think they were, not just from the feds but within their own system. You played by the rules or you were an outcast, or "white trash". It was as true of whites as blacks. It was a system where everybody had their place, where family connections meant everything, and you played by the rules and kept your mouth shut if you disagreed. Otherwise, you just didn't get anywhere in life. Simple as that.

If you played by the rules you were one of the "good ol' boys". If you spoke your mind, at best you were a harmless eccentric with queer ideas. At worse, there might be an old oak tree and a rope in your future, depending on the time and circumstances.

Now, even today, these same states draw more in federal dollars than what they put out. That in itself is a form of socialism. Some might even call it state welfare. Only in many of these cases the state apparatchiks dole out the money in the form of patronage. It's not as bad now as it used to be, but it is still pervasive.

The main point is, it's a small regional example of how socialism has more in common with feudalism-in actual practice, not theory-than it does with any great social advances or improvements over capitalism.

The irony is, it was a system that owes as much to impositions from the federal government, in the form of Reconstruction, than to any actual southern tradition. It is one of the great mysteries as to how the region that has the most dislike of the federal government is the most patriotic in wartime. They produce the most soldiers and officers relative to their population than any other area.

Then again, they don't see the government as the country, which is one of many areas where I am in agreement with them.

And like China, recent improvements in economic conditions over the lat thirty years, as compared to the past, owes more to capitalist reforms, you might say. But also like China, there are still socialist elements, and feudal ones as well.

And I know this sounds like tortured comparisons and that many will object that this isn't what socialism is supposed to be about.

Fair enough, it might not supposed to be about that, but the historical realities of such places as the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, etc., suggest it is about that nevertheless. When one party gets a solid lock on power, it always leads to stagnation, corruption, cronyism, and all kinds of abuses. And there will always be those empowered to hold up the system by way of intimidation, bribery, and even violence. They are all cut from the same cloth, whether it be white robes and religious imagery, or a state apparatus with paramilitary training. It's all the same.

Frank Partisan said...

Ducky: If they would have been expropriated for real, Jim Crow wouldn't have occured.

Pagan: Feudalism is something specific, as is Stalinism (a form of Bonapartism), socialism and capitalism.

I've been giving you specific examples of what is done under feudalism. Even in Mao's worst times, currency was used to buy things. Nobody traded skins etc. You are using rhetoric shamelessly. Historical feudalism is different than undeveloped capitalism.

Socialism comes out of capitalism. It is based on the working class, not indentured servants etc. It involves currency, and values coming out of the French Revolution,

SecondComingOfBast said...

Ren-

they were expropriated, how can you suggest they were not? The expropriation of the big plantations as well as the Union military occupation of the South, and its overall heavy-handedness, was precisely what led to Jim Crow. It might still have existed to a degree, but those things at least greatly exacerbated it.

This all ended when Hayes took office in 1876, but by then the damage had been done. Hayes policies left the South an isolated region within its own country. It was using one extreme to answer to another one.

Finally, I know what feudalism is. I am not saying feudalism is the exact same thing as socialism. I am saying that socialism-as it actually is practices in reality as opposed to theory-is more similar to feudalism than it is to capitalism.

All economic systems by their nature are based on acquisition and ownership.

In feudalism, it was based on land ownership. Land was owned by the titled nobility and the church. There was a great deal of the barter system but there was a gold standard of sorts as well. They minted their own currency and issued promissory notes. Capitalism could never have even been born, let alone developed, if everything had been based on barter.

The breakdown of society at the time was based on rivalries between the nobility and churches, and rivalries among these groups, and led to formation of Craft and Trade Guilds. This could never have even begun to happen based on trading a bearskin for a chicken.

The economy was land-based, but there was gold in them thar hills, and other precious stones and metals. Some even used spices.

The point is, in any kind of economy, who is in charge of it is based on who owns something of value. In capitalism the ownership transferred from the churches and the nobility to the capitalists, if you will.

If socialism has a prayer of working, then the working class has to be the majority owner of the means of production. That means they have to own something. That means they also have to own something as individuals or the system falls apart, as usual. It will continue to fall apart until socialists respect the needs of individuals to have a stake in their own personal destinies and well-beings, not just as members of a class.

Feudalism probably has a longer history than any other system. It lasted for so long because the sovereign recognized that if he was going to be a successful and secure monarch, he had to have support, and so he granted titles-and ownership of land-to the lords and knights who in return pledged him their allegiance.

Bear that in mind, they owned something as individuals. The serfs bound to their lands paid them with a share of their crops. The lords paid a tax or tribute to the monarch, and pledged their service in times of war.

If that had been all there was to it, it would be that way right now. There were towns, with all kinds of trades, craft, and professional people, who bought and sold things with minted coins and notes, not just bartered goods and services.

Socialists allergic reaction to people owning something as individuals is why socialism is and will remain a massive fail.

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Foxessa said...

Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Linkin, are all about marketing one's professional self.

Places like Live Journal and now the new Dreamwidth are about blogging and creating communities of friends and like-minded. I far prefer LJ and that sort of digital presence. They are also expressions of creativity and individual interesting sensibility in a way FB, MS, the blither, er, twitter, etc, are not. They are time sinks that don't give back enough to make it worth while -- for ME, let me haste to add. We're all different with different needs. I don't need those services.

At some point, maybe, unless we just do his own website, I'll make a FB for Vaquero, but it's about promotion, not about 'something.' That I happen to believe that Vaquero's productions ARE about Real Something(s) is the only reason I'd do it though.

Right now though, we're working on getting some of his output up on places like iTunes for download.

Love, C.

Foxessa said...

New Orleans is the most northern point in our hemisphere of what Vaquero categorizes as the "Saints and Feasts" belt -- i.e. living in wheel, circular time, not arrow, linear time, being Catholic not protestant.

There was still serfdom in the regions that sometimes are and sometimes are not Poland up through WW1. The kinds of resettlement Russia, the Soviets and the nazis were doing in the lead up to WWII and after, was again the worst kind of serfdom, which included prison-slave labor as the the means for elimination of many populations that the Russians and the nazis wanted out of the way for their own chosen populations.

The South literally re-established slavery very quickly, and it had nothing at all to do with 'harshness' by the north, which is highly, highly exaggerated and mostly

Read Eric Foner and Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas A. Blackmon.

It wasn't just in Europe that it took WWII to get rid of slavery, er serfdom.

Alas, that currently there are even more slaves in the world than almost any other time -- partly to do with population growth, and this enormous 'surplus' population we have. Most of the enslaved are women and children in the sex trade.

Love, C

Ducky's here said...

Well pagan, the southern plantation owners certainly wanted to retain their system and found that sharecropping filled the bill nicely.

Industrialization did have to visit the south but came as workers organized the mills in the Northeast and the owners brought them down south for the cheap labor.

The plantation system, by another name to be sure, did prove viable for some time in the agricultural south.

Foxessa said...

It certainly was viable. Planters joined forces with the legal and criminal systems to literally keep black people from getting on those trains and going North in the teens and 20's and 30's. After the Great Flood of 1928-1929 they rounded up black people of both sexes at gunpoint, imprisoned them on levees in conditions like that of the superdome during Katrina and after -- feeding and watering them just about as much -- to sandbag and do other flood fighting, and then afterwards to clean up the wreck left behind. They didn't get paid any more than did the slaves before the Civil War.

Love, C.

SecondComingOfBast said...

Okay, I can agree with that. That kind of thing is just another form of slavery. It happened in Florida, where chain gangs built almost all the initial state roads in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. There are always those with money who take advantage of others for cheap labor and work them for "slave wages".

My point was, there is not and for that matter never was any great mass movement in support of the slave or plantation system. I don't even believe it was popular in the South during and before the Civil War. Not that most white southerners were not racist, or they were tolerant, just that for the most part their approach to the Civil War was as resisting the dictates of the Union.

At the same time, the slave system by its very nature would have had to limit opportunity for poor whites at the same time it was enslaving blacks. The South being predominantly an agricultural economy, what other opportunities were there? Not much.

Frank Partisan said...

parceriadelink: It's not possible to do justice to eleven blogs. You only need one blog done right.

Pagan: Even a paper clip is socially made and sold. From extracting ore to manufacturing to selling. The production is social, but the profit is private. Production is already social, so the next step is making profit social. There is no one person who can make a paper clip.

There is no socialist country based on feudalism. There is no such thin as a socialist country. Socialism is world system. Some countries are in transition. Nobody can say for example that say Cuba, can get to socialism just on its own resources.

I don't agree Federal law is socialism.

Ducky: Even if the union expropriated the slave system, they didn't shall we say establish worker's control.

Foxessa: Alas, that currently there are even more slaves in the world than almost any other time -- partly to do with population growth, and this enormous 'surplus' population we have. Most of the enslaved are women and children in the sex trade.I'm not certain if that is true. NGOs use that issue for raising money. Some of the big scares as during the tsunami a few years ago, proved to be myth.

Mark Prime (tpm/Confession Zero) said...

Is debate important to you?Yes. If it is healthy and constructive unlike what Fox and other "news" channels are calling "debate". Just a bunch of mealy-mouthed, mic-cutting, tantrum throwing, blowhards that do nothing but discourage rational thought and dialogue. It's not like we need any of that kind of sanity these days... Hell! Let's just keep watching these mindless drones and we shall soon become them.

SecondComingOfBast said...

The reason profit is private is because investment is private. People that invest money expect to make a profit on it. The more profit they stand to make, the more they are willing to invest.

So under a socialist system, who makes the investments, past what is taken through expropriation?

The workers? I doubt that? The state? Probably? What else has the capacity under a socialist system to make large-scale investment?

So under any scenario, somebody is going to be the owners. Even if it is run as non-profit, the investor class still has to at least draw even. They are still going to be majority owners.

That's the key, under any economic system, the leaders of society are those who own the means of production. In feudal times, it was the aristocracy and/or the church, who owned the lands. In capitalist times, it is the investors and bankers, the business owners, those with the most accumulated wealth.

So who are the owners in a socialist system? If the workers, or working class then how do you measure their wealth? By industrial output? Sorry, that's not tangible wealth.

The answer is, or would seem to be, the state? How does the state measure it's wealth? That I don't know, but I don't see a whole lot of difference here between workers and serfs in any real sense. Someone has got to run things, and I'm afraid the working class is going to get the short end of the stick, as always, only shorter. At least under capitalism, you can save money if you try and work hard enough, maybe even become an investor yourself.

By the way, the Union did not expropriate the slave system, they ended it. They expropriated the plantations, and offered former slaves the deal of "seven acres and a mule" in return for working the land.

This went on for ten years after the Civil War, and ended then with the disputed election of 1876 and the deal that put Rutherford Hayes in the White House, in return for which he withdrew Federal troops from the occupied south. That was the beginning of Jim Crow.

The decade between the end of the war and the election of Hayes was relatively benign as far as the former slaves went, save for the reactionary activities of the Ku Klux Klan. You can deny it was a kind of socialism all you want, but it was. The Republican Party in those days were the progressives, some of them were even radical, in social terms.

K. said...

The system was viable for the agricultural and shipping interests, anyway. It didn't work out so well for the poor, white or black. In 1964 at a fundraiser in Louisiana, Lyndon Johnson spoke to the exploitation of the south's poor and how the powers that be had successfully driven the racial wedge between black and white:

"When Mr. Rayburn came up as a young boy of the House, he went over to see the old Senator, the leader, one evening, who had come from this Southern State, and he was talking about economic problems. He was talking about how we had been at the mercy of certain economic interests, and how they had exploited us. They had worked our women for 5 cents an hour, they had worked our men for a dollar a day, they had exploited our soil, they had let our resources go to waste, they had taken everything out of the ground they could, and they had shipped it to other sections.

"He was talking about the economy and what a great future we could have in the South, if we could just meet our economic problems, if we could just take a look at the resources of the South and develop them. And he said, 'Sammy, I wish I felt a little better. I would like to go back to old'-and I won't call the name of the State; it wasn't Louisiana and it wasn't Texas--'I would like to go back down there and make them one more Democratic speech. I just feel like I have one in me. The poor old State, they haven't heard a Democratic speech in 30 years. All they ever hear at election time is Negro, Negro, Negro!'"

When southern troops invaded Pennsylvania in 1863, they were stunned by the prosperity amassed by free agricultural labor. They had been told that it wasn't possible, that free labor would mean the end of what little they had, and that it would be taken from them by free blacks. Sadly, as Johnson noted, wealthy whites played the race card over and over, and played it successfully.

SecondComingOfBast said...

'I would like to go back down there and make them one more Democratic speech. I just feel like I have one in me. The poor old State, they haven't heard a Democratic speech in 30 years. All they ever hear at election time is Negro, Negro, Negro!'"

But in those days, "negro, negro, negro" WAS a Democratic speech. People in America even have forgotten for the most part that slavery was, well of course not *started* by the Democratic Party, but they supported it from the day of the party's earliest beginnings. The confederacy was a Democratic Party creation, in all candor.

Truman and Johnson were the only Democratic politicians that have ever actually done anything for blacks in any real substantial way. Truman integrated the military. Johnson pushed the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. He did a few other things that became corrupted, like welfare.

Now, like gays and feminists, blacks are on a plantation of the spirit, toiling away with their votes at the behest of the Jackson and Sharptons, and groups like ACORN, who are the straw bosses of the Democratic Party plantation.

Show me a black man who becomes successful, and a stable, reliable pillar of the community and a family man, and nine times out of ten I will show you a Republican Party voter.

Show me a fat ass bitch or skinny skank crack ho with eight kids selling her ass to supplement for ADC and food stamps while her middle daughter is getting ready to have her first bastard child, not inconceivably by her step-father who lounges around in his underwear with the boom box shaking the rafters, while most of the kids real daddies are in prison, dead, or in parts unknown, and I'll show you a family of Democratic Party voters who when the bus picks them up on election day think they're going to pick up government cheese and meth-and probably are.

K. said...

This is so nakedly racist that I assume it's pure trollery. Which doesn't make it any less racist.

SecondComingOfBast said...

No it's so nakedly truth that its pure truthery and you're the type of people that are enablers of the exact kind of things I have described. Keep it in Canada, chump, we're sick of it here. Better yet, come down here and live it before you run your fat mouth. Before you ask, yes, I've lived it. I went through a three month period where the same crack ho practically busted down my door high on crack wanting money and trying to sell me her ass. I run the bitch off every time she came around. I think she just ran through the neighborhood on crack fumes and didn't remember one day to the next who run her off and who made damn sure she swallowed for her ten dollars. I knew another one who suddenly disappeared. She turned up six years later at the bottom of a septic tank. They both drew ADC. Think before you run your fat mouth to people who have been there, chump.

Foxessa said...

Um, that promise of 40 acres and a mule to the freedmen? Not kept.

However many a plantation owner got compensation for loss of 'property.'

Just sayin'. It's documented.

And no crack ho ever did to me what the rethugz have done to me for decades.

The internet smart know that bringing up nazi germany is a de-railer and topic killer, and so is that fantastic, ubiquitous black welfare baby machine and her preggers baby mama daughter. Blech. These cliches are the final resort to those who facts, history and knowledge have stymied.

Not to mention getting personal and throwing out personal attacks. But just in case, "K" isn't fat and his mouth isn't fat either.

You have shown yourself as what you are. As if we didn't already know, of course, which we did.

SecondComingOfBast said...

Yeah, its fine for that sweltering, arrogant, elitist piece of Canadian bacon to call me a racist and a troll, that's not personal at all, huh?

Don't tell me about the welfare crack ho's and the other lowlifes in the inner city. I don't need history, I lived it and saw it up close and personal, so on that score you're both full of shit.

Yeah, the Republicans are the cause of all your problems, I'm sure. George Bush and Dick Cheney are obviously embroiled in a conspiracy to keep your old man from hitting the big time with his crappy music too, which is why you're reduced to plugging it on internet blogs. Good luck with that.

Keep blaming the world and the evil white capitalist power structure for all your problems and be sure and let us all know how far it gets you.

Frank Partisan said...

Poetryman: I agree with you about media pundits. They become incestuous.

Now, like gays and feminists, blacks are on a plantation of the spirit, toiling away with their votes at the behest of the Jackson and Sharptons, and groups like ACORN, who are the straw bosses of the Democratic Party plantation.

Show me a black man who becomes successful, and a stable, reliable pillar of the community and a family man, and nine times out of ten I will show you a Republican Party voter.

Show me a fat ass bitch or skinny skank crack ho with eight kids selling her ass to supplement for ADC and food stamps while her middle daughter is getting ready to have her first bastard child, not inconceivably by her step-father who lounges around in his underwear with the boom box shaking the rafters, while most of the kids real daddies are in prison, dead, or in parts unknown, and I'll show you a family of Democratic Party voters who when the bus picks them up on election day think they're going to pick up government cheese and meth-and probably are.
It's true the Democratic Party was the party of segregation, just look at the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. The Republicans in Lincoln's time, played a better role. Your points are lost with the above racist tirade. It got worse by being defensive, and going on with that ridiculous crack whore story. Crack addicts come from all sort of backgrounds.

Who owns a workplace under socialism? One third the state, one third the workers, and one third the union movement to represent workers as a whole.

If you are against social welfare, you'd better have an alternative. Conservative welfare policy will lead to blood in the streets.

Foxessa: Bill Clinton ravished the welfare system in ways Reagan could only dream of doing.

Now the Slumdog Girl is having her house demolished.

K: Good Rayburn story.

K. said...

"Yeah, its fine for that sweltering, arrogant, elitist piece of Canadian bacon to call me a racist and a troll, that's not personal at all, huh?"

Since I'm not Canadian, I assume that you're referring to someone else and not me.

For the record, I said that your remark was racist, not you. As for the trolling, if the shoe fits...

SecondComingOfBast said...

Ren-

I'm not against welfare. Shit, I've drawn welfare. But I got off it as soon as I could. The point isn't welfare, or people who need it, the point is the system that is corrupted, and corrupts a large percentage of the people who become and stay dependent on it. It's not about race. If the same percentage of white people were on welfare as blacks or other minorities, it would have the same effect on whites. That is just a fact.

To call somebody a racist who points out the flaws and weaknesses of a system is not a progressive point of view, it's more reactionary than anything.

I do not want to end welfare. I just want to make sure it works, helps people, and in the long term helps them to become self-sufficient so they or their families no longer need it. Is that a bad thing? The welfare system is unfortunately self-perpetuating.

My crack whore story was ridiculous, you are very correct about that. But do you know why it is ridiculous? Because every single word of it was the truth. The second woman in my story was actually something of a friend. Her name was Jackie. I tried to help her to my limited extent. I actually liked her. When I followed the story about the woman's remains found at the bottom of the septic tank, I had no idea it was her until they finally identified her. It had been six years since I had last seen her. I may have even saw her with her killers the last time I saw her. She was with two white men in their thirties, and she looked like she was trying to get my attention, but I avoided talking to her, because I didn't know the people she was with.

She was just one of many sad, countless stories of despair and hopelessness, a person that most people "care" about as members of a group, but don't give a rats ass about as individuals.

And until welfare and other such social programs becomes a way of actually uplifting people and helping them improve their lives so they can move on from there with some kind of dignity and self-worth, as opposed to what in all too many cases might best be described as a vote buying scheme, things will never change.

Foxessa said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Frank Partisan said...

Pagan: When you started your post, you were making points. You have a habit of getting into redneck mode, and losing your point.

I was at a coalition political meeting a few weeks ago. I called my political opponents idiots. I lost the vote of the neutral people.

K; It's not trolling. The whole discussion was a pain. It was dealing with arguing about things that are close to feudalism or like feudalism. Words need to be used precisely. I'm not interested in dealing with imprecise definitions. There is a difference between an undeveloped capitalist country and feudalism.

Foxessa: No post goes as I want it, except for recipes.

SecondComingOfBast said...

The point is the difference in the real lives of real, every day, common people, when it comes to feudalism, undeveloped capitalism, and every example I've ever known of socialism, is minimal if any. The most basic difference in the three comes down to ownership.

Feudalism-Historically agricultural economy, with lands owned by the titled nobility-monarchs, lords, knights, etc.-and in many cases by the Church. In some cases they worked hand in hand, in other cases the Church and the nobility came into conflict.

Serfs lived on the land and worked it, paying the nobility with a portion of what they produced. There were also towns with craftsmen and other kinds of workers, skilled and unskilled. It wasn't all agricultural, but it was an agricultural based economy. They also mined gold and other precious stones and minerals, minted coins, issued promissory notes, and in some cases even traded in spices and some fabrics like silk.

The mythological barter system as you envisioned it as trading a chicken for a bearskin had little if anything to do with it, at least insofar as how the owners of the economy conducted business. That might have been how townspeople conducted business amongst themselves in many cases.

Capitalism-Ownership in the hands of the "capitalist class", in the form of investors, entrepreneurs, and bankers. In the case of a highly advanced capitalist system, ownership can expand beyond the original parameters.

In the case of undeveloped capitalism, there is more cronyism and in almost all cases, though there is not a titled nobility or aristocracy, it amounts to the same thing, with families owning and inheriting the vast majority of the economy of a country, passing it down from one generation to the next. There is little in the way of entrepreneurship or investment, and what little there is must go through the owners. They reap the profits, the people in general gain little if anything.

Socialism-Again, it all comes down to ownership. Supposedly, nobody "owns" anything, which is nonsense. In the scenario you gave, of one third each ownership by state, workers, and unions, what you basically have is ownership by the state bureaucracy who makes all the decisions. Even if it started out with such an evenly divided ownership, how many times has it or would it remain so evenly divided.

In the long run, since nothing remains static forever, it would boil down to the state bureaucracy controlling the unions and the actual real workers getting the short end of the stick. In a good many cases it would seem they end up more with a few splinters in their calloused hands than an actual piece of the stick.

Again, that's the difference and the only real difference in the three.

Again, it's all about who takes ownership of property and the economy. And make no mistake about it-whoever controls it, owns it. The people on the bottom tiers of any one of the three types would be hard-pressed to find a reason to care about what little differences in the three there are, for if there are any real differences, they do not apply to them.

Frank Partisan said...

The end result of this discussion is that Foxessa, took down the link to my blog, and refuses to come back again ever.

I don't delete comments, because I did once, and I regret it. I deleted the evidence I had against a certain enemy.

Nothing the right would like better, is for me to delete their posts. It would turn every issue into free speech being talked about.

This has become a combat blog. It's not for everyone. I get heat from both the right and the left. In all actuality the blog is a headache. The other side is, I met good people from all over the world.

Pagan: The right is in the wilderness, because of your POV, not knowing differences between systems. Stalinism, early capitalism and feudalism are different, That's why the right can't tell that the face of US imperialism Obama is not a socialist.

SecondComingOfBast said...

That's just it, I do know the difference, it comes down to ownership, and whoever controls the economy, that amounts to ownership of the economy or the "means of production", if you will.

If the "working class" really controls the means of production, then I guess to that extent you might have socialism.

However, if it ends up being the state in control of the economy, then what else does that amount to but the state being the de facto owners of the economy? You can give it whatever term you wish, but it is what it is.

The government bureaucracy of the Soviet Union, for example, as they controlled the means of production, were the de facto owners of the means of production-not the Soviet workers. I do not suggest that as an example of socialism. It is just another privileged class lording it over the masses, simple as that.

In early capitalism, or undeveloped capitalism, you have rich families who pass down ownership of lands and resources through the generations and exercise an iron grip control over them. How is that different from feudalism? Because they don't call themselves kings, lords, knights, barons, etc?

That's what you might call a difference without a real distinction.

I'm sorry about Foxessa, but she stepped into something that wasn't about her. I was the one being subjected to the name-calling, by someone who just didn't like the way I explained my point, which by the way was based on real-life knowledge and experiences. I won't put up with somebody out of a misguided sense of political correctness attacking me for relating what I saw with my own two eyes.

I made my points in response to their attacks on me, and when they both responded in what seemed an attempt to continue what I assume were attempts to bait me further, I ignored them. Bear that in mind.

I think you have some people here that want the discussion on your blog limited to an Amen Brother chorus, so to speak, and want to play the victim when somebody like me defends himself. Life is a bitch.

K. said...

What amuses me are the incorrect assumptions and willful misreading that underlie some pretty bitter rhetoric, to wit:

* that I'm Canadian (wrong)

* that I've spent my life in some sort of liberal ivory (wrong)

* that I have had no personal contact or exposure to minority groups (wrong)

* that I called someone a racist (wrong: I wrote that a particular remark was racist, which is not the same thing. And I stand by what I wrote.)

It's really hard to respect an argument that draw a general conclusion from a single instance -- I don't care what it was -- and that is accompanied by scattershot name calling, none of which even comes close to the mark. Especially when it includes a pointless attack on someone's spouse, which is way beyond the pale.

SecondComingOfBast said...

"It's really hard to respect an argument that draw a general conclusion from a single instance -- I don't care what it was --"

Not that it matters one whit, but it so happens that it was but a single instance among many others of a similar nature of which I was familiar at the time I lived in Over-The-Rhine in Cincinnati.

There were a large number of the people there who lived in that manner. Perhaps not the majority (though that would not surprise me) but certainly a very large percentage, enough that it was certainly noticeable, to say the least.

It was and for all I know still is a lifestyle shared by many, if not the majority of the folk in that neighborhood. What ones don't live it, for the most part accept it.

My complaint was not the people so much as the system that enables it and even to a point encourages it.

Again, I lived it, I saw it, I knew it. What is "beyond the pale" is for somebody to label me as racist for merely pointing out what I knew from personal experience. If what I said was racist in pointing that out, then Bonfire Of The Vanities should be banned as well, which I am sure would suit you and Al Sharpton fine.

There were also a large number of the white population in the area who were habitually drunk on cheap wine. I somehow doubt I would be labeled as a racist had I pointed that out, even were I black, or probably in your case especially if I were black.

That you say now you were not calling me a racist but my words is not only a dodge, it is irrelevant.

For you to whine now about names I called you is laughable. I don't care about your feelings, or of anyone who dares to attack me for speaking the truth, little man.

I do however wish to proffer a most sincere apology for one thing I said which perhaps went way too far, and for which I do feel some sense of shame

I therefore now most humbly apologize to Canada, and to all Canadians.

K. said...

"For you to whine now about names I called you is laughable. I don't care about your feelings, or of anyone who dares to attack me for speaking the truth, little man."

I simply pointed out the astonishing number of factual inaccuracies in your posts. Enough to make me doubt that you've even set foot in Cincinnati, much less lived there.

"hat you say now you were not calling me a racist but my words is not only a dodge, it is irrelevant."

Have it your way: You're a racist. But you're the one who said it, not me.

SecondComingOfBast said...

Of course you don't believe I lived in Cincinnati, I was expecting that, as that is the only way you can think of to negate the fact that I might just know what I'm talking about, something a small-minded person like you can't abide because it challenges your smug, elitist assumptions.

Oh well, whether you or anone else here believes it or not, I lived in Cincinnati, in Over-The-Rhine, and worked there, and clawed my way out of the place not a moment too soon. It's the apologists and enablers like you who have made it the hell-hole that it is, so if I come across as having minimal respect for you, then for once you read me right.

The notion that you consider me racist doesn't bother me one bit, in fact its almost laughable, if it weren't for the fact that its the people who think like you who perpetuate the misery index amongst black folks more than I ever would, or could.

K. said...

I didn't consider you racist until you said that you were.

Frank Partisan said...

I don't see a point in this going on.

Pagan: When I visit a conservative blog, I usually stay away from personal fights.

Using the black crack whore story was offensive period. It looks like there is such a thing as political correctness. It's really just about being sensible.

In the post above this, you compare Democrats to Nazis. I hate the Democratic Party, but have a sense of proportion. I think Obama is getting closer to being like Bush, all the time. To say the Democrats are Nazis, is mindless.

In the early days of this blog, the discussions were good. Some spilled over to rightist blogs like Sonia's.

Foxessa asked what was the purpose of this blog. It started just for fun. I got more involved personally. Because of my blog Graeme moved here, and we do political work together. The group I'm with, met sympathizers in Maoist dominated Nepal. Citizen K met Foxessa through this blog.

I'm angry Foxessa left.

SecondComingOfBast said...

That's fine, I'll shut up about it after this, no matter what anybody says after, but just know this-I'm not going to put up with somebody calling me, or as he put it "what I said", racist or liar because he has no other answers.

The crack whore story might have been offensive. I can't help that. It was the truth. I knew these people. I often times wish I had never met them or gotten to know them, but its too late for that now. I'll never get within eye or ear shot of any more of them if I have my way about it, I can sure guarantee you that.

That one girl Jackie was a friend. I tried to help her. Really big god damn waste of time. She was basically a good person who went down the wrong path, until her life spiraled out of control. She did not deserve what happened to her. Nobody deserves to be dumped in the bottom of a septic tank.

It was the system that did it, and here's a clue for you-the system was not "Rethuglican".

The system that killed her and enabled so much more misery and despair was the one upheld and enabled by the very people that want to get all in a huff and get their panties all twisted in a wad because they don't like to hear the truth about the system THEY support and enable.

They own it. It's their system.

I said I was sorry about Foxessa, what else can I say? She evidently thinks everybody that doesn't agree with her is out to get her, like the "Rethugz" who have supposedly been doing it for "decades". She was implying people like me are responsible for her problems. Well, I god damn resent that too.

What this all boils down to is I know what life is like in the inner-city, and I'm not going to put up for one second with anybody calling me a liar or even implying I'm a liar. The passive aggressive behavior exhibited by the apologists for a decadent and corrupt system doesn't impress me one bit.

The very fact that they are unable to face up to the flaws in a system, and call somebody else racist for doing so, is precisely the reason why things never change for the better, at least not for long. The damage these kinds of people are doing to the country is more profound than ten thousand Bin Ladens could ever come close to doing in their wildest dreams.

As for the Democrats, it might ne going too far to call them Nazis. It is not going too far to call them fascists for the way they abuse government control. The same goes for the right to a large degree. They also abuse government control, when they have it.

Where were all the Democrat worshipers when Jack Kennedy and his ruthless little punk brother Bobby was tramping around the world conducting assassinations of foreign leaders, or trying to. Where were they when Bobby Kennedy as AG abused civil rights, kidnapped people and threw them out of the country without a hearing, etc.

The same people that would rightly eviscerate George W. Bush for that kind of stuff look at Bobby Kennedy like he's some kind of evolved soul.

Just imagine if instead of Bobby Kennedy kidnapping alleged Mafia leader Carlos Marcello and transporting him to Guatamala without a hearing and with nothing but the clothes on his back and money in his wallet, it was George W. Bush who did that to, say for example, an allegedly radical Islamic imam. How these same bastards would howl like banshees is frightening to contemplate.

They make me sick to my stomach. I literally hate these people.

But like I said, I'll shut up about it. I think I've more than made my point.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

blogging? it's just an exercise in exercising your ego.

Otto said...

I like blogging because, unlike facebook, it’s not just friends so you’re not just talking to yourself. Some of us need to express ourselves.
I’m a product of the world around me and I totally reject this system of liars, patronizers and murderers that make up the leadership of this society.

Lenin once said that communists come from a deep hatred of the bourgeoisie. And I think he is right. A person needs something to believe in and I sure don’t believe in this system.
I welcome interaction with anyone’s blog.

Anonymous said...

"I like blogging because, unlike facebook, it’s not just friends so you’re not just talking to yourself."

Yes. I like FB because my friends post great stuff on it. But blogging is writing, which is different -- no matter how many Notes you publish on FB.

Twitter is just twitchy unless you have some really specific working group on it.

But blogging is writing, or more like writing, and that is why it is different.

FB is seductive, though, and this is a good post topic for that reason among others.

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

Renegade:

I don't comment here anymore, aside from this thread on the state of blogging, because of the people that frequent here.

I think that's a shame.

The atmosphere here is not good at all and the argument that to delete means getting rid of 'evidence' doesn't wash.

Oh well.

Anonymous said...

this place is fucked

Anonymous said...

Is renegade eye on twitter? If so please let me know. Would love to follow updates on there. Cheers Tio

My twitter page is www.twitter.com/balafria