Maggie's Farm

Mitchell's one screwed up guy.



RFK was giving a speech on failing US foreign policy and the VN war, he said (and note that he's paraphrasing George Bernard Shaw):

"I think there's more that we can do internally here, I think there's more that we can do in South Vietnam. I don't think we have to accept the situation, as we have it at the moment. I think that we can do better, and I think the American people think that we can do better.

George Bernard Shaw once wrote, "Some people see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say, why not?"

RFK was talking about a concrete situation, Shaw later explained that his idea was about general outlook on life. But this doesn't work for Mitchell, who quotes out of context and elsewhere trots out the usual cherry picked parade of horrors to illustrate why not imagining a better United States is for the best.



yeah, sorry about the need to eradicate the slave trade, slavery, jim crow, the need for Brown v Board or Miranda, or the timely need Civil Rights Act or the Voting RA -- all of which were done without gulags or guillotines (except their equivalent in the civil war, but Mitchell's ilk did put up a lively stand against change).

they're just spoiling your country, aren't they.

glad we agree that Mitchell is so screwed up.

people like you always descend to personal attacks. why is that? if you have something substantive to say supporting Mitchell's pompous bullshit, try having a normal discussion or debate. you'll lose, but you'll learn something. this is a political forum, and no one wins debates by resorting to purely ad hom attacks, as has been explained to you more than once.

what I notice about your comments in particular, and this isn't limited to you by any means, but you're one of the more prominent practitioners of it, is that you're light nonexistent on substantive criticism of anyone who brands himself as "conservative" or adopts a conservative fantasy of constitutional structures and law, and reflexively, unthinkingly heavy on ad homs for everyone else. "liberal" or "progressive" are just brand names for you, polar opposite of your own self-branding, and therefore, evil. anyone is free to adopt childish logic, but here's the real problem: your fawning over the founding fathers and their brilliant yet at the same time deeply flawed work in the constitutional convention prevents you from any serious introspective look at what's wrong with this country. what's wrong with the USofA? those damn liberals, feminists and activist judges. its not a two party system that gives you only the illusion of participation and teaches you not to ask whether something is fundamentally wrong with the system itself, something that might be fixed. RFK / Shaw said dream of things as they might be? commies! In this sense, you're a system tool, which resists any change of any kind. so as long as you can blame the progressives, you don't even have to ask if anything is ever wrong with your own thinking.

you're against slavery? thanks for clearing that up.

hey, did you know that the men who drafted and ratified the constitution, preserving the slave trade and deferring the final resolution of the problem weren't Democrats? no? I figured you didn't, the democrats weren't around until 1828.

do you know why jim crow even existed post-war through the 1960s? in general, because neither the GOP nor the Democrats thought it was worth eradicating when either controlled the government during those 80 or so years, but specifically because because GOP presidents Grant and Hays withdrew federal troops enforcing civil rights in the South as part of a deal involving the disputed 1876 election. although federal troops were previously successful in suppressing the klan and other groups like it, the job was abandoned for political expediency. isn't it ironic?