[Debate] "Is America Becoming a 'Socialist State'? 40 Percent Say Yes / Obama the Socialist? Not Even Close

Fri Jul 13 19:13:23 BST 2012

"Reds" for anticommunists = anyone who doesn't agree 100% with Milos
Forman that "Communism" was nothing but what he says about it

On Fri, Jul 13, 2012 at 1:57 PM, peter waterman
<peterwaterman1936 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Convoluted and/or Jesuitical reasoning may conceal which reds I 'bait' and
> what I do the other 99% of my time.
>
> Which: those who identify uncritically with state socialism, whether of the
> Communist, Social-Democratic or Populist kind.
>
> What I do the rest of my time: try, along with a widening range of Occupy,
> Common-ers, Feminists, Ecologists, Indignados, Anti-racist, Anarchist,
> Autonomist, Indigenous, labour and rural movements, to develop a global
> social movement that recognises and surpasses capitalism, state-ist
> socialisms and imperialisms of all kinds.
>
> Pw
>
>
> On Fri, Jul 13, 2012 at 6:09 PM, Yoshie Furuhashi
> <critical.montages at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> An inconvenient truth: 99% of people who agree 100% with Milos Forman
>> on "Communism" are also 100% opposed to "Western European-style
>> socialism."  So, red-baiting doesn't help the remaining 1% of
>> anticommunists like Milos Forman or Peter Waterman.
>>
>> On Fri, Jul 13, 2012 at 12:00 PM, peter waterman
>> <peterwaterman1936 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > I do not agree with the politics of Milos Forman as expressed below.
>> > Indeed,
>> > I strongly disagree with them. But I respect him for the movies
>> > mentioned.
>> > And I recognise and validate his experience in Communist Czechoslovakia.
>> > Yoshie neither recognises nor even mentions this, so anxious is she to
>> > cast
>> > him as an apologist for Loony Bin America. One problem with Loony Bin
>> > America is that its dogmatism, self-righteousness, narrowness and,
>> > indeed,
>> > fanaticism, is not confined to the ruling elite or the Right.
>> >
>> > In Peru (of which I have some experience) things are different. Leftists
>> > of
>> > various kinds, including feminists, recognise and even celebrate the
>> > writer
>> > Mario Vargas Llosa, whose books are pirated, sold on the street, and
>> > read by
>> > many literate Peruvians, regardless of class or ethnicity. They condemn
>> > his
>> > politics and his pathetic/comic failure to win the presidental elections
>> > against the rightwing populist, Fujimori.
>> >
>> > Like Vargas Llosa, Forman is a distinctly better, or more interesting,
>> > artist than he is a politician.
>> >
>> > We must thank the Godess that Yoshie is not, and is never going to be,
>> > Minister of Culture and/or the Cultural Gauleiter of a State-Socialist
>> > America. For then Milos Forman would suffer the fate of those he
>> > mentions in
>> > his awful story of state-socialist Czechoslovakia.
>> >
>> > PeterW
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > On Fri, Jul 13, 2012 at 4:42 PM, Yoshie Furuhashi
>> > <critical.montages at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Milos Forman doesn't realize that the Cuckoo’s Nest is here and now,
>> >> not out there or in the past, and that he is also doing his part to
>> >> keep everyone in the loony bin.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> <http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Elections/President/2012/0713/Is-America-becoming-a-socialist-state-40-percent-say-yes>
>> >> Is America becoming a 'socialist state'? 40 percent say yes.
>> >> The perception that America is turning more socialist is not just a
>> >> fringe view, according to a Monitor/TIPP poll. Debate over the size of
>> >> government could influence November elections.
>> >>
>> >> By Mark Trumbull, Staff writer / July 13, 2012
>> >>
>> >> Two of every five Americans today say their country is evolving into a
>> >> socialist state.
>> >>
>> >> That finding, contained in a new nationwide poll, highlights a central
>> >> debate in the 2012 election campaign and a major challenge for
>> >> President Obama.
>> >>
>> >> The "socialist state" survey is just one many indicators that
>> >> Americans are worried that the federal government is growing too large
>> >> – a feeling that works against Mr. Obama's reelection hopes.
>> >>
>> >> Are you more liberal than President Obama? Take our quiz!
>> >>
>> >> In a Christian Science Monitor/Investor's Business Daily/TIPP poll
>> >> completed last week, 40 percent of respondents generally agreed with
>> >> the statement: "The US is evolving into a socialist state." That
>> >> outnumbered the 36 percent who disagreed. About one-quarter of
>> >> respondents expressed a neutral view or said they were unsure.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/11/opinion/obama-the-socialist-not-even-close.html>
>> >> July 10, 2012
>> >> Obama the Socialist? Not Even Close
>> >> By MILOS FORMAN
>> >> Warren, Conn.
>> >>
>> >> WHEN I was asked to direct “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” my
>> >> friends warned me not to go anywhere near it.
>> >>
>> >> The story is so American, they argued, that I, an immigrant fresh off
>> >> the boat, could not do it justice. They were surprised when I
>> >> explained why I wanted to make the film. To me it was not just
>> >> literature but real life, the life I lived in Czechoslovakia from my
>> >> birth in 1932 until 1968. The Communist Party was my Nurse Ratched,
>> >> telling me what I could and could not do; what I was or was not
>> >> allowed to say; where I was and was not allowed to go; even who I was
>> >> and was not.
>> >>
>> >> Now, years later, I hear the word “socialist” being tossed around by
>> >> the likes of Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Sean Hannity,
>> >> Rush Limbaugh and others. President Obama, they warn, is a socialist.
>> >> The critics cry, “Obamacare is socialism!” They falsely equate Western
>> >> European-style socialism, and its government provision of social
>> >> insurance and health care, with Marxist-Leninist totalitarianism. It
>> >> offends me, and cheapens the experience of millions who lived, and
>> >> continue to live, under brutal forms of socialism.
>> >>
>> >> My sister-in-law’s father, Jan Kunasek, lived in Czechoslovakia all
>> >> his life. He was a middle-class man who ran a tiny inn in a tiny
>> >> village. One winter night in 1972, during a blizzard, a man, soaked to
>> >> the bone, awakened him at 2 in the morning. The man looked destitute
>> >> and, while asking for shelter, couldn’t stop cursing the Communists.
>> >> Taking pity, the elderly Mr. Kunasek put him up for the night.
>> >>
>> >> A couple of hours later, Mr. Kunasek was awakened again, this time by
>> >> three plainclothes policemen. He was arrested, accused of sheltering a
>> >> terrorist and sentenced to several years of hard labor in uranium
>> >> mines. The state seized his property. When he was finally released,
>> >> ill and penniless, he died within a few weeks. Years later we learned
>> >> that the night visitor had been working for the police. According to
>> >> the Communists, Mr. Kunasek was a class enemy and deserved to be
>> >> punished.
>> >>
>> >> I found myself in an equally absurd, but less depressing, situation
>> >> when I was moonlighting on Czech TV as a moderator, introducing
>> >> movies, in the early ’50s. It was live, so there was no chance to
>> >> bleep politically undesirable words. Every utterance, even in
>> >> supposedly spontaneous interviews, had to be scripted, approved by the
>> >> censors, learned by heart and repeated verbatim on the air.
>> >>
>> >> When I was preparing to interview one Comrade Homola, a powerful
>> >> Communist, I sent him questions, but didn’t receive his answers. My
>> >> boss, also a powerful party member, told me: “He is lazy! Write his
>> >> answers for him, and remind him to learn them by heart.” So I did.
>> >>
>> >> Comrade Homola arrived at the last moment. When the red light went on
>> >> and I asked the first question, he reached into his pocket, took out
>> >> my answers and started to read them, awkwardly and obediently —
>> >> including my inadvertent grammatical mistakes. And thus, to my
>> >> consternation, went the whole interview. In the control booth, my boss
>> >> hit the roof. I was fired the next day for ridiculing a representative
>> >> of the state.
>> >>
>> >> Whatever his faults, I don’t see much of a socialist in Mr. Obama or,
>> >> thankfully, signs of that system in this great nation. Mr. Obama is
>> >> accused of trying to expand the reach of government — into health
>> >> care, financial regulation, the auto industry and so on. It’s fair to
>> >> question whether the federal government should have expanded powers:
>> >> America, to its credit, has debated this since its birth. But let’s be
>> >> clear about how frightening socialism actually could be.
>> >>
>> >> Marx believed that we could wipe out social inequities and Lenin
>> >> tested those ideas on the Soviet Union. It was his dream to create a
>> >> classless society. But reality set in, as it always does. And the
>> >> results were devastating. Blood flowed through Russia’s streets. The
>> >> Soviet elite usurped all privileges; sycophants were allowed some and
>> >> the plebes none. The entire Eastern bloc, including Czechoslovakia,
>> >> followed miserably.
>> >>
>> >> I’m not sure Americans today appreciate quite how predatory socialism
>> >> was. It was not — as Mr. Obama’s detractors suggest — merely a
>> >> government so centralized and bloated that it hobbled private
>> >> enterprise: it was a spoils system that killed off everything, all in
>> >> the name of “social justice.”
>> >>
>> >> What we need is not to strive for a perfect social justice — which
>> >> never existed and never will — but for social harmony. Harmony in
>> >> music is, by its nature, exhilarating and soothing. In an orchestra,
>> >> the different players and instruments perform together, in support of
>> >> an overall melody.
>> >>
>> >> Today, our democracy, a miraculous gathering of diverse players,
>> >> desperately needs such unity. If all participants play fair and strive
>> >> for the common good, we can achieve a harmony that eluded the
>> >> doctrinaire socialist projects. But if just one section, or even one
>> >> player, is out of tune, the music will disintegrate into cacophony.
>> >>
>> >> I am not asking Mr. Obama and the Republican leaders to stop playing
>> >> instruments of their choosing. All I am asking is that every player
>> >> keep in mind the noble melody of our country. Otherwise the noisy
>> >> dissonance might become loud enough to wake another Marx, or even
>> >> worse.
>> >>
>> >> Milos Forman won Academy Awards for best director for the films “One
>> >> Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Amadeus.”
>> >>
>> >> --
>> >> Yoshie Furuhashi
>> >> <http://mrzine.org/>
>> >> _______________________________________________
>> >> Debate-list mailing list
>> >> Debate-list at fahamu.org
>> >> http://lists.fahamu.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/debate-list
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > --
>> > 1. Contribute to Journal Special on 'New Worker Movements'!
>> > 2. Blog: http://www.unionbook.org/profile/peterwaterman
>> > 3. EBook 2011, 'Under, Against, Beyond - Essays 1980s-
>> > 1990s shttp://www.into-ebooks.com/book/under-against-beyond/
>> > 4. WorkingPaper 2012: 'Emancipatory Labour Studies':
>> > 5. Draft EBook 2012: 'Recovering Internationalism - Essays 2000-10'
>> > (draft):
>> >      http://www.scribd.com/doc/82125289/ReCovIntComp-A-2
>> >      http://www.scribd.com/doc/82129474/ReCovtIntComp-B-2
>> > 6. Essay 2012: 'The 2nd Coming of the World Federation of Trade
>> > Unions':
>> >
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
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>> > http://lists.fahamu.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/debate-list
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Yoshie Furuhashi
>> <http://mrzine.org/>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Debate-list mailing list
>> Debate-list at fahamu.org
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>
>
>
>
> --
> 1. Contribute to Journal Special on 'New Worker Movements'!
> 2. Blog: http://www.unionbook.org/profile/peterwaterman
> 3. EBook 2011, 'Under, Against, Beyond - Essays 1980s-
> 1990s shttp://www.into-ebooks.com/book/under-against-beyond/
> 4. WorkingPaper 2012: 'Emancipatory Labour Studies':
> 5. Draft EBook 2012: 'Recovering Internationalism - Essays 2000-10' (draft):
>      http://www.scribd.com/doc/82125289/ReCovIntComp-A-2
>      http://www.scribd.com/doc/82129474/ReCovtIntComp-B-2
> 6. Essay 2012: 'The 2nd Coming of the World Federation of Trade   Unions':
>
>
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-- 
Yoshie Furuhashi
<http://mrzine.org/>