Tuesday, February 4, 2020

Give Me A Friggin' Break

I just read a Bernie Bot make one of the dumbest comments I've ever seen, he claimed that it was a certainty that Bobby Kennedy would have voted for Bernie.  I would guess this ass is somewhat younger than fifty years old and would possibly have parents who weren't around when Bobby Kennedy got shot. 

Bobby Kennedy was a cold warrior UNTIL he decided to jump on the bandwagon that Eugene McCarthy had driven up to then, as those idiot fatheads Allard Lowenstein and Curtis Gans encouraged him to as about their eighth choice, in the "Dump Johnson" movement.  Their first choice had been Bobby Kennedy but he declined as did a number of others, Kennedy jumped in after he saw that it might be possible to continue the Kennedy Dynasty by forcing Johnson out.  Him getting into that race was ironic in that he was part of his brother's administration which did so much to get us further entangled in the Vietnam war.

ANYONE WHO WANTS TO WAX NOSTALGIC ABOUT THAT SHOULD BE SLAPPED IN THE FACE WITH THE FACT THAT THAT IS WHAT GOT US NIXON IN 1968.   

Kennedy, of course, got assassinated, Eugene McCarthy lost and began his career of campaigning against Democrats and enabling Republicans for the rest of his pretty disgusting life, Allard Lowenstein was someone I always thought was pretty dodgy,  he was great pals with the fascist William F. Buckley (who eulogized him at Lowenstein's funeral), he was a good buddy of Donald Rumsfeld while they were in congress and he frequently had some pretty awful people support his political campaigns, sometimes,like Rumsfeld pulling the rug out from under him in the end.  

Curtis Gans' political wisdom can be seen from one of the last articles he wrote in which he expressed his great hope for fighting the phony astro-turf Tea Party by the nice Republicans. 

You should read it to see what a bunch of friggin' chumps these guys were, never, ever learning a friggin' thing.  

In 1967, I conceived of and, with the late Allard Lowenstein, organized a grassroots effort that came to be called “The Dump Johnson Movement,” which intended to provide an alternative to extremism, reverse the upward trajectory of American involvement in Vietnam and remove the principle buttress of that escalation from power. When Sen. Eugene McCarthy provided national leadership for that effort by mounting a challenge in the Democratic primaries, I enlisted in his campaign. When McCarthy began his candidacy, he was unknown to 57 percent of the American citizenry. When I took the train to New Hampshire to help coordinate McCarthy’s campaign there one month before the primary, polls showed only two percent in the state supported his candidacy. The conventional wisdom was that a sitting president could not be beaten within his own party. But we succeeded in making it impossible for Johnson to seek reelection, transforming the Democratic Party’s advocacy from pro-war to anti-war, and creating a permanent majority national popular opposition to the continuation of the war.

Only a similar major grassroots effort in GOP primaries by mainstream Republicans and Republican-leaning independents now can reverse the destruction the right-wing is wreaking to party and country.

The first step on this road is to cease dignifying the far right with the word “conservative.”

The essential underpinnings of conservatism from Burke to Buckley have been a respect for the institutions of both governance and society, moderation in manner, skepticism about major and abrupt change and a concomitant rejection of extremes. True conservatives’ belief in traditional values is leavened by a tolerance for diverse views. Their support for free markets is tempered by understanding the need for constructive regulation of their excesses. They are committed to human equality and support equality of opportunity without a mandate for equality of result. Their vision of governance is by representative rather than direct democracy and, where possible, a civil approach to political dialogue and a rational approach to public policy.

Apparently, as late is 2013 he thought he could shame the Republican-fascists into being nice and accepting democracy.  

Remember, those shitheads helped, in a big way, to get us Nixon as you consider that I found that comment on a Michael Brooks Bernie Bot video.  Idiots, all of them.  

I'd have gone into Bobby Kennedy's career of starting out working for Joe McCarthy as well as being in charge of his brother's efforts to get rid of Castro, not to mention any number of less than PC activities he was engaged in as Attorney General.  

As I noted here the other day,  I'm over the Kennedy mystique.  Because I remember the 60s quite well. 

No comments:

Post a Comment