[Peace-discuss] Mike Gravel on Palin

[C. G. Estabrook]

You're flailing a bit here, Mort. Some of our friends even seem to think I spend
too much time stating my own opinions, but I obviously haven't got them across
too well to you -- perhaps because I'm an affluent, college-educated person who
unlike you is not particularly "exercised by guns and religion."

In your criticism of what you take to be my views you don't address the two
points I actually make:

	[1] "Biden is..."

	[2] "...social issues are the opiate..."

I suppose that's because the first is obviously true; but your unwillingness to
look at the evidence ("I care not what Larry Bartels ... says") for the second
strikes me as a bit unscientific.

My "polemical emails" (who would do such a thing?) are an attempt to convince
members of an anti-war movement that the presidential election is meant to be a
distraction and that the pretense that the Democratic candidate is anti-war is a
fraud.

In our America, policy is well-insulated from politics -- we have at best a
simulacrum of democracy -- and a serious anti-war movement has to recognize
that, if it's not to be co-opted.  Passionately preferring a candidate within
the allowable limits of debate is a recipe for irrelevance.

That's what they want you to do. --CGE


Brussel Morton K. wrote:
> I care not what Larry Bartels, an élitest academic 
> [http://www.princeton.edu/~bartels/biography.html], says. You needn't quote 
> someone else for what are your own opinions, all the more ironic in this case
>  in that you too seem to be one of the élites excoriated. Perhaps you—I'm not
>  sure about Bartels— would be happy with a theocratic state, a Catholic or 
> fundamentalist one one no doubt, that would forbid a woman's right to choose 
> and get rid of public education among other things. McCain might be happy 
> with that as well. I'm getting fed up with your polemical emails, which seem 
> to do nothing but attempt to convince readers to make it possible for a 
> McCain presidency.
> 
> --mkb
> 
> 
> On Sep 3, 2008, at 2:09 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> 
>> Biden is a perfectly conventional tool of militarist and corporate 
>> interests, responsible for murderous policies at home and abroad, from the 
>> Middle East war to the new bankruptcy law. Insofar as she departs from 
>> those policies, I (like Gravel) would prefer Palin.
>> 
>> As Larry Bartels points out, "it is affluent, college-educated people ... 
>> who are most exercised by guns and religion. In contemporary American 
>> politics, social issues are the opiate of the elites." --CGE
>> 
>> 
>> Brussel Morton K. wrote:
>>> Gravel sounds deluded. His thesis is that ignorance is bliss. Sarah 
>>> Palin's incorruptibility, with recent revelations, seems not so clear 
>>> after all. He should have waited a bit before writing…. The implication 
>>> of all the rants on this listserve against Obama-Biden is that  it's 
>>> better to have a McCain-Palin executive than one of Obama-Biden. Or, 
>>> really, it doesn't matter. Incidentally, do you believe Palin to be less 
>>> belligerent and corporate than Biden, as Gravel suggests? I guess we'll 
>>> just have to wait and see. Or maybe you favor her antiabortion, 
>>> creationist, NRA, energy, environmental,… positions, which Gravel sloughs
>>>  off as an afterthought. ?   --mkb On Sep 3, 2008, at 11:21 AM, Matt 
>>> Reichel wrote:
>>>> Interesting piece by former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel on McCain's 
>>>> running mate, Mrs Sarah Palin. Echoing the words of Alex Cockburn 
>>>> previously posted on this list, far from being "cooky", he says: 
>>>> "Foreign policy experience? Thank god she has none beyond that of a 
>>>> normal citizen subject to the militarization of our culture over the 
>>>> past 50 years, particularly so in Alaska with its strong military 
>>>> presence. The three other would-be leaders have tons of experience 
>>>> among them. But whether liberal or conservative all three are committed
>>>>  to a policy of American imperialism with the self-appointed role of 
>>>> world policeman. This role of trying to influence the world with our 
>>>> military might sustains bloated defense budgets that profit the few and
>>>>  impoverish the social and economic needs of the many." "Sarah Palin's 
>>>> Clean Slate: Thank God, She Has No Foreign Policy Experience!" 
>>>> http://counterpunch.org/gravel09032008.html