[Peace-discuss] Mike Gravel on Palin

[Brussel Morton K.]

Comments below.

On Sep 3, 2008, at 3:50 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:

> 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."

I believe that you are much exercised by religion. I've listened to  
argumentation with Paul Mueth on your (former) WEFT program. As to  
guns, I don't know which guns you refer to.
>
> 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..."

As often happens, you beg the question by bringing up non sequiturs.  
My point is that you lambaste the Democrats far more than the  
Republicans, and in particular Obama and Biden more than McCain and  
(now) his new choice for vice-president.
	I have no illusions about the foreign policies of a Biden or Obama;  
there are only marginal differences (which may be important) here  
from those of the Bush administration and the neocons. I would only  
note that we have stark evidence of the Bush/Cheney policies; no  
guesses are necessary. For Obama, there is a degree of uncertainty,  
e.g.,  diplomacy before bombs, thus a glimmer of hope, and in this  
sense perhaps a meaningful distinction between them. On domestic  
issues, which evidently you deem unimportant, so called "social  
issues"!,  there are meaningful differences. Such as nominations to  
the Supreme Court. I have the feeling that you would be happy, though  
not admitting so, with another Scalia, Rehnquist or Thomas there, so  
that women's and constitutional rights would continue to be eroded.
>
> 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.

Science has no application here. Political scientists come out on all  
sides of almost every issue.
>
> 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.

I' m led to think that your anti-war credentials are compromised by  
your implicit favoritism of the Bush/Cheney, soon to be a McCain  
gang. Your constant harping on Obama's defects seem obsessive.
>
> 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.

Who's passionately preferring a candidate? Again a begging of the  
important questions.
>
> 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
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