Geo Kozma Posted June 8 Share Posted June 8 On 5/29/2024 at 8:34 PM, James DiEugenio said: How in Hades was what David Phillips and the CIA did in Chile in 1973 progressive? How on earth was what the CIA did in Jakarta in 1965 progressive? How the heck was what the CIA did in Congo to get rid of Lumumba, progressive? This is progressive? Matt has a weird idea of progressivism. I think Matt Cloud thinks that the soviet Union was colonialist and tyrannical, so trying to save ccruel Capitalist Dictators against Russian infiltration ...Chile Indonesia Congo was - fro this angle - (all the figitives from Vn and Afganistan and many other places cd testufy but Wesstern idealusts are too dogma-loving to hear them /us - progressive as a tyrannical Capitalism has more - maybe restrained - indepence for individuals ---it follows that the wars against Communists is progressive. It is a very original insight - only Albert CAmus saw this in the last 70 years in the West. (Murdered by the KGb according to French gossips of that era). Thanks Matt for havig voice this weird idea of progressivism. i am sad to see that Mr diEugenio whose historical role gives him so much influence - is obviously not ready to look at things from this angle. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Cloud Posted June 8 Share Posted June 8 37 minutes ago, Geo Kozma said: I think Matt Cloud thinks that the soviet Union was colonialist and tyrannical, so trying to save ccruel Capitalist Dictators against Russian infiltration ...Chile Indonesia Congo was - fro this angle - (all the figitives from Vn and Afganistan and many other places cd testufy but Wesstern idealusts are too dogma-loving to hear them /us - progressive as a tyrannical Capitalism has more - maybe restrained - indepence for individuals ---it follows that the wars against Communists is progressive. It is a very original insight - only Albert CAmus saw this in the last 70 years in the West. (Murdered by the KGb according to French gossips of that era). Thanks Matt for havig voice this weird idea of progressivism. i am sad to see that Mr diEugenio whose historical role gives him so much influence - is obviously not ready to look at things from this angle. Thanks, Geo. "ULTRA Camel." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
W. Niederhut Posted June 8 Author Share Posted June 8 On 5/29/2024 at 3:54 PM, W. Niederhut said: Indeed. Calling the Cold War era CIA "progressive" is like calling Dick Cheney an environmentalist. How many right wing dictatorships did the CIA establish and support in the Cold War era, in order to protect corporate capitalist profiteering from indigenous populism? Well, thanks to Mr. Kozma and Mr. Cloud for explaining to us that Suharto, Pinochet, Efrain Montt, et.al., were actually "progressives." How could we have been so naive? Perhaps the CIA was correct all along... 🙄 Compared to the mass civilian murders committed by our progressive CIA-backed leaders-- Suharto, Pinochet, Montt, et.al.-- just look at the communist disaster in modern Vietnam! The Domino Theory turned out to be true in Vietnam-- people can now order Domino's Pizza in Ho Chi Minh City. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Cloud Posted June 8 Share Posted June 8 13 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said: Well, thanks to Mr. Kozma and Mr. Cloud for explaining to us that Suharto, Pinochet, Efrain Montt, et.al., were actually "progressives." How could we have been so naive? Perhaps the CIA was correct all along... 🙄 Compared to the mass civilian murders committed by our progressive CIA-backed leaders-- Suharto, Pinochet, Montt, et.al.-- just look at the communist disaster in modern Vietnam! The Domino Theory turned out to be true in Vietnam-- people can now order Domino's Pizza in Ho Chi Minh City. I did not say "Suharto, Pinochet, Efrain Montt, et.al., were actually "progressives."" It';s the conflict that creates the progressivism. The clash. Two things coming together are forever each altered. Had they remained separate -- no progress. Remember "organizations in conflict become like one another." https://www.commentary.org/articles/daniel-moynihan/imperial-government/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Kalin Posted June 8 Share Posted June 8 What's Moynihan's principle of progress, he who blamed race victims for their plight, asserting they "could benefit from a period of benign neglect?” Took some doing but I found the answer while researching the sayings of his mentor, Doctor Pangloss: "Private misfortunes make the general good, so that the more private misfortunes there are the greater is the general good." "Benign" soon turned into "malign" and the new Jim Crow. Such is progress following Moynihan. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Cloud Posted June 8 Share Posted June 8 (edited) 11 minutes ago, Michael Kalin said: What's Moynihan's principle of progress, he who blamed race victims for their plight, asserting they "could benefit from a period of benign neglect?” Took some doing but I found the answer while researching the sayings of his mentor, Doctor Pangloss: "Private misfortunes make the general good, so that the more private misfortunes there are the greater is the general good." "Benign" soon turned into "malign" and the new Jim Crow. Such is progress following Moynihan. Wait -- didn't Moynihan write Johnson's Howard University speech in 1965 with Dick Goodwin? Isn't that the basis for the "Equity" agenda? Did he not create affirmative action with LBJ while still during the Kennedy Administration? Sounds like he was setting one-side up against the other. First unleashing the forces of ethnic and group identity and then urging that such fixation -- what he identified as "the racialism" -- be cooled for a bit. Thesis meet anti-thesis, you might say. Very Hegelian. Edited June 8 by Matt Cloud Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
James DiEugenio Posted June 8 Share Posted June 8 (edited) 6 hours ago, Geo Kozma said: I think Matt Cloud thinks that the soviet Union was colonialist and tyrannical, so trying to save ccruel Capitalist Dictators against Russian infiltration ...Chile Indonesia Congo was - fro this angle - (all the figitives from Vn and Afganistan and many other places cd testufy but Wesstern idealusts are too dogma-loving to hear them /us - progressive as a tyrannical Capitalism has more - maybe restrained - indepence for individuals ---it follows that the wars against Communists is progressive. It is a very original insight - only Albert CAmus saw this in the last 70 years in the West. (Murdered by the KGb according to French gossips of that era). Thanks Matt for havig voice this weird idea of progressivism. i am sad to see that Mr diEugenio whose historical role gives him so much influence - is obviously not ready to look at things from this angle. The problem with this is simple: the CIA was not fighting communist dictatorships in these cases. As Jonathan Kwtiny notes in Endless Enemies, Lumumba was not a communist. He was elected in a free election to a constitutional government. Sukarno was not a communist. In fact, at the time of his death, Kennedy was trying to get better deals for Sukarno from the industries doing business in Indonesia. Allende was not a communist, he was a socialist, who again ran in and won an election. Its true he wanted to nationalize certain industries, but that was part of an elected program. So, this idea that somehow the CIA was fighting communism in these countries is simply false. What the CIA was doing was overthrowing governments that were duly elected and wanted to try and make improved lives for the citizenry. What the CIA did in those countries was disastrous in each case. Lumumba and Allende ended up being killed, and Sukarno placed under house arrest. Meanwhile, their followers were massacred. And in each case, fascist dictators took over. Edited June 8 by James DiEugenio Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Cloud Posted June 8 Share Posted June 8 More -- was the "leak" of the (benign and irrelevant) "benign neglect" memo done by persons on "The Left" -- leaky Leon Panetta I'm looking at you -- to remove Moynihan from the Nixon admin just as Watergate and it's attendant activities about to begin? That is to say, to protect Moynihan, and cast him as a reactionary racist so as to avoid suspicion in the coming downfall of the Old Right? That's a yes. Same thing had occurred with the Leak of the Moynihan Report which got him out of the Johnson adin, and avoided for him association with that admin and Vietnam. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
James DiEugenio Posted June 8 Share Posted June 8 (edited) 3 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said: Nice one by William: "The Domino Theory turned out to be true in Vietnam-- people can now order Domino's Pizza in Ho Chi Minh City." 3 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said: Edited June 8 by James DiEugenio Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Cloud Posted June 8 Share Posted June 8 2 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said: The problem with this is simple: the CIA was not fighting communist dictatorships in these cases. As Jonathan Kwtiny notes in Endless Enemies, Lumumba was not a communist. He was elected in a free election to a constitutional government. Sukarno was not a communist. In fact, at the time of his death, Kennedy was trying to get better deals for Sukarno from the industries doing business in Indonesia. Allende was not a communist, he was a socialist, who again ran in and won an election. Its true he wanted to nationalize certain industries, but that was part of an elected program. So, this idea that somehow the CIA was fighting communism in these countries is simply false. What the CIA was doing was overthrowing governments that were duly elected and wanted to try and make improved lives for the citizenry. What the CIA did in those countries was disastrous in each case. Lumumba and Allende ended up being killed, and Sukarno placed under house arrest. Meanwhile, their followers were massacred. And in each case, fascist dictators took over. I that you were ignoring me. But yes you are closer to an accurate reading of history. Problem is you have stopped at 1975. The fascist dictators are no more. Now China is by and large the caretaker if you like of much of these regions. So there is a process involved, it involves many decades and often swings of the political pendulum. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Cloud Posted June 8 Share Posted June 8 26 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said: Nice one by William: "The Domino Theory turned out to be true in Vietnam-- people can now order Domino's Pizza in Ho Chi Minh City." The Vietnamese of today are far less hung-up about "The American War" let alone their 1,000 years of struggle for self-determination than anyone here. They have gotten on with their lives. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Cloud Posted June 8 Share Posted June 8 1 hour ago, Michael Kalin said: What's Moynihan's principle of progress, he who blamed race victims for their plight, asserting they "could benefit from a period of benign neglect?” Took some doing but I found the answer while researching the sayings of his mentor, Doctor Pangloss: "Private misfortunes make the general good, so that the more private misfortunes there are the greater is the general good." "Benign" soon turned into "malign" and the new Jim Crow. Such is progress following Moynihan. And if you'd be at all interested in exploring the question of whether Moynihan was the devil in fact incarnate, you'd not be the first, Mickey Kaus having devoted a few words on Slate in 1999 to the question. https://www.kausfiles.com/archive/index.09.23.99.html If you do proceed, however, I'd only ask you keep in mind the understanding of Satan as God's prosecuting attorney. "The bloody climax of the New Testament? chief law-enforcement officer? God's employee, not God's enemy. The word satan, on this account, derives from a Persian legal term meaning prosecutor, the officer who presents the charges against the accused in court." Review: God's District Attorney Reviewed Work: The Origin of Satan Elaine Pagels Review by: Steven Helmling The Sewanee Review Vol. 105, No. 3 (Summer, 1997), pp. xcii-xciv (3 pages) Published By: The Johns Hopkins University Press https://www.jstor.org/stable/27548366 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
W. Niederhut Posted June 8 Author Share Posted June 8 1 hour ago, Matt Cloud said: The Vietnamese of today are far less hung-up about "The American War" let alone their 1,000 years of struggle for self-determination than anyone here. They have gotten on with their lives. Not counting all of those who died as a result of our "progressive" bombing campaigns, and defoliation, during the LBJ and Nixon administrations. What did they accomplish? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Cloud Posted June 8 Share Posted June 8 This deserves to be shared in full. A Modest Proposition Is Daniel P. Moynihan the Devil? home archive masthead contact Posted Thursday, September 23, 1999 [Note: You can sign up for the free kausfiles.com e-mail service at the end of this column.] Have you ever considered the possibility that Daniel Patrick Moynihan is the center of evil in the modern world? Initially, this proposition might seem counterintuitive, I know. But consider the evidence: 1) In 1965, Moynihan writes an influential essay praising the "professionals" who would go to Washington and use the "information available for social planning" to make policy. Result: these "professionals" become the hated New Class of 'pointy-headed bureaucrats' who discredit the idea of activist government. 2) Moynihan co-authors the 1963 book, Beyond The Melting Pot, which asserts that America's ethnics aren't melting, don't intermarry, etc.. It becomes respectable for all manner of groups to define themselves by their racial and ethnic backgrounds. Result: the curse of "identity politics" is loosed on the land. 3) Moynihan drafts the "final submission" of the interagency commission that recommends the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill. Result: social disaster. Thousands of pathetically ill people are freed to wander the streets and cause harm to the social order, to themselves, and to others. 4) Moynihan writes a 1965 speech for President Johnson to deliver at Howard University, in which LBJ calls for "not just equality as a right and a theory, but equality as a fact and equality as a result," pregnant words that lead to what we now call "affirmative action." Result: American society is riven by a rancorous ongoing debate over racial preferences. 5) Moynihan writes his 1965 report identifying a "tangle of pathology" destroying the institution of the black family, but he omits (probably for careerist reasons) a discussion of possible solutions. Result: pointing out the black family's troubles is labeled an excuse for doing nothing ("blaming the victim"); the War on Poverty gets knocked off track; and honest discussion of America's gravest social problem ceases for two decades. Welfare rolls fill up with single mothers. 6) Moynihan pushes his 1969 plan for a "guaranteed income," which tries to cure the perversity of sending checks to single mothers by sending checks to everyone. The plan fails, but its acceptance by the policy elite helps destigmatize the dole. Result: Welfare dependency continues to soar; the black ghettos become nightmarish pockets of broken families, crime, and 'opposition culture.' 7) With these social forces in place, Moynihan urges a racial policy of "benign neglect." 😎 When Jimmy Carter proposes reforming welfare, Senator Moynihan helps defeat the plan, while whining about the need for fiscal relief for New York state ("[T]he time has come to think of ourselves," he says.) Result: the welfare crisis goes unaddressed for another decade, while the ghettos get even worse, and Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich get the issue that lets them to sweep into power. An impressive record. Now comes Alexander Cockburn, writing in the N.Y. Press about the massacres of East Timorese by pro-Indonesian militias. Cockburn points out that -- it's too eerie! -- Daniel Patrick Moynihan had a hand in that disaster as well. It seems that as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, he helped snuff out any opposition to Indonesia's invasion in 1975 of what had been a Portuguese colony seeking independence. In his U.N. memoir, A Dangerous Place, Moynihan boasts "the United States wished things to turn out as they did, and worked to bring this about. The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success." Brilliant, blindered egomaniac, or satanic force? You, the reader, be the judge! P.S.: Did I mention that today Daniel Patrick Moynihan endorsed Bill Bradley for President? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Cloud Posted June 8 Share Posted June 8 1 minute ago, W. Niederhut said: Not counting all of those who died as a result of our "progressive" bombing campaigns, and defoliation, during the LBJ and Nixon administrations. What did they accomplish? We've been over this. The Vietnamese achieved independence. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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