The Secret!

Did he really write:
“Instead of encouraging free and open debate, collectivists strive to discredit and intimidate opponents. They engage in character assassination.”

That is a bit rich coming from the right. And I would have thought that Charles Koch didn’t have a character to assassinate. Just saying what he does is enough (an heir to a fossil fuel fortune financing global warming denialists).

I found his defense list interesting. Most of it is can be replaced by ‘Koch industries is a very large company’

More on the Koch Brothers – they not only bash opponents in op-ed pieces in the Murdoch-owned WSJ, defund public television in a way to obstruct programming they don’t want aired, they heavily fund advertising campaigns in states not their own – like North Carolina, where their organization, AFP, has thrown more than $8.2 million against Kay Hagan.

The Koch brothers own vast industries; they want to own the nation as well. It is a terrifying prospect for Americans. And yesterday’s SCOTUS decision gives the appearance that they own SCOTUS as well.

What was Schopenhauer’s short treatise on motivated reasoning? Definitely not ‘the world as will and idea’.

“collectivists”? Really?

I do love how he immediately begins using the exact same tactics he accuses the left of. Projection has always been a central feature of the conservative personality,

In the original (non-Schopenhauerian) German: Einbildung is auch eine Bildung.

Schopenhauer, the original libertarian.

Meh …it is much easier to just label and dismiss rather than engage. The US ethanol policy is a national disgrace and it isn’t a republican vs. democrat issue. I agree with him and you should too. Other issues? May be less so.

I love Saul Alinsky. It is funny that the right has fastened upon him, at this late date, as a devil figure. And it is also funny that liberals will distance themselves from him, as though he were the spawn of Stalin and Mao. Well, maybe from their perspective, the liberals are right – if, in this era, we identify liberals with, say, Obama democrats. Alinsky is pretty clear about what he was doing in Rules for Radicals:
“What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.”
An excellent statement. One contrary to all our politics at the moment. But I like to think that the Koches are right to fear it, even though it has zero traction at present.

I think Alinsky has some currency. Organizers I’ve known certainly tended to know his work.

To GiT @21 – organizers may know Alinsky. The rank and file voter the Tea Party is trying to reach hears only of Alinsky from conservative voices – and his name is hurled as a curse. And the Tea Party base has been conditioned to hate organizers. Think of how Obama’s community organization work has been characterized by his opponents (you know, the ones who abhor those tactics that discredit and intimidate opponents and engage in character assassination.)

The Koch’s get a lot of political mileage out of opposing mediocre, pre-compromised “progressive” policy. That crappy Nashville bus lane proposal is classic. I wish they really were up against Alinsky or a bob mcmanus option.

At least one branch of the Tea Party seems to have used Alinsky as a textbook for how to organize, not simply to “know thine enemy”:

http://inthesetimes.com/article/6439/tea_party_confidential

The campaign the left has waged against the Kochs (decades after others opposed them) has helped the Kochs to a good degree. Now, any criticism of the Kochs can be tamped down as akin to that of Harry Reid and Maddow.

If you want to oppose the Kochs where they’re weakest, make the points at my link to their supporters. Because the way the left does things now isn’t working too well.

This is the best part:
“Koch employees have earned well over 700 awards for environmental, health and safety excellence since 2009, many of them from the Environmental Protection Agency and Occupational Safety and Health Administration. EPA officials have commended us for our “commitment to a cleaner environment” and called us “a model for other companies.”

Our refineries have consistently ranked among the best in the nation for low per-barrel emissions. In 2012, our Total Case Incident Rate (an important safety measure) was 67% better than a Bureau of Labor Statistics average for peer industries.”

He manages to cite EPA, OSHA, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics in defense of his “freedom,” as if these entities simply record and recognize the accomplishments of free industry and don’t have anything to do with producing results through regulation.

Ah yes, ye olde “criticizing a conservative is the real intolerance” gambit. It never goes out of fashion.

” the real crime of Schopenhauer- and Alinsky-inspired despots is, wait for it, character assassination”

Yes, very silly. He meant to say George R.R. Martin.

“How dare those commie-collectivists imply we have any obligation to our fellow human beings.”

Apart from the obligation to recognise their claims to control scarce natural resources, of course.

[the man’s whole asset base is a result of direct government intervention — all property rights are — but he doesn’t recognise it because he has his head up his arse. This is a medical problem, however you dice it.]

In view of the “conservative” control of the US Supreme Court, there is nothing stopping American oligarchs, like the Koch boys, from running this country. The best we can hope for is that some struggles among the ruling billionaires may result in benefits for the general public. In a way, the Supreme Court originalists are correct. The American founders wanted the wealthy to control the country. They just didn’t know how concentrated that wealth would become and how much mischief a small group of billionaires could do.

roy belmont wrote:

Maybe it’s not enough to dismiss someone as “stupid” or “mean” or having “their head up their arse”, in order to overcome their efforts to fuck the world.

In the immortal wordsu of Tom Lehrer,

Remember the war against Franco?
That’s the kind where each of us belongs.
Though he may have won all the battles,
We had all the good songs!

Straightwood wrote:

In view of the “conservative” control of the US Supreme Court, there is nothing stopping American oligarchs, like the Koch boys, from running this country. The best we can hope for is that some struggles among the ruling billionaires may result in benefits for the general public.

For a slightly different take, see this.

“Let ’em all go to hell except Cave 64” — Tuli Kupferberg (with a nod to Mel Brooks).

And racism!

What does that mean, even? Genuine question. My best, semi-speculative guess is that you mean to say something like, the left—or sorry, what passes for it—lobs accusations of racism where they’re irrelevant/misplaced/besides the point/flat out false. Which, really? Seems bizarre. Or again, what else could that mean?

I liked his defense of his companies’ safety records, although the “collectivists” bit made me laugh. When I first read that, my immediate thought was “The Parasite Hates Three Things: Free Markets, Free Will, and Free Men” (cookie for the reference).

Koch Industries is an odd set of firms. You don’t see a lot of those sprawling, multi-product privately owned conglomerates anymore in the US – most of them went public years ago and became giant holding companies.

Were there really “Alinsky-inspired despots?”

I mean, speaking of what does that mean, even. I have a vague sense that it it might have been intended as a joke of some sort.

Well, the Schopenhauer bit is funny – and it would be even funnier as a rant performed by a tycoon in a Tom Wolfe novel – but it’s pretty obvious that this guy and his ghost-writer are using a talking point that some exorbitantly paid consultant said would work.

Eskimo @28
“Koch is right on one item: the ethanol in fuel requirement is bogus.”

Well no it isn’t bogus, it is poor policy.

@46 “Or maybe rather than relying on superficial “identity politics” or PC jargon, one should consider the underlying socio-structural conditions and mechanisms that would generate social-psychological forms of racism or racial identifications, that just reify and reproduce the status quo in distracting forms.”

Because no campaigner on racism has ever had this idea, thought about this, written about this or campaigned about this!

Seriously fella, do you think you are being brilliantly imaginative and original here?

> Maybe it’s not enough to dismiss someone as “stupid” or “mean” or having “their head up their arse”, in order to overcome their efforts to fuck the world.

I’m not dismissing. I’m describing: we have fairly well-established processes for people whose mental-health problems mean they present a threat to the health/wellbeing of others, and these are what we should use.

@57:

‘Cause it was a comment directed at another commenter’s puzzlement at the what might have been meant by another commenter’s side remark.

Some campaigners against racism, sexism, etc. might have a more complex understanding of what sort of “intentional object” they’re up against and what they might expect to achieve. Other campaigns might be quite superficial and amount to little more than another manipulative version of “bourgeois managerial ideology”.

(Since the firsr commenter is well-known here for his anti-Obama attitude, you might read the “Black Agenda Reporter”, and their take on whether Obama is “good for the blacks”, despite ostensibly overwhelming black support).

Thank you for the snark though. Now please, may I have another?

Katherine @ 60

“anal millinery”

!

> In fact, it lets such people off the hook to ascribe their anal millinery to mental illness – since such illness suggests diminished responsibility.

Do you apply this logic to poor people, too?

But yes. That’s kind of the point: I want to “let people off the hook”, because if I can find a way that gets me the outcomes I want without having people suffering — even if it’s “deserved” suffering, punishment — then… well, having other people suffering doesn’t actually give me a benefit I recognise, see. Not as such, not directly.

Do you apply this logic to poor people, too?

What? I think we must be talking past each other, because I haven’t the faintest idea what you mean.

anal millinery

is my new favorite phrase. I just need to start working it into random conversations now.