"We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the whole world - a nation of bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not just Whores for power and oil, but killer whores with hate and fear in our hearts. We are human scum, and that is how history will judge us.... No redeeming social value. Just whores. Get out of our way, or we'll kill you.
Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flack-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush?
They are the same ones who wanted Muhammad Ali locked up for refusing to kill gooks. They speak for all that is cruel and stupid and vicious in the American character. They are the racists and hate mongers among us - - they are the Ku Klux Klan. I piss down the throats of these Nazis.
And I am too old to worry about whether they like it or not. Fuck them." - Hunter S. Thompson
I found this in the latest issue of Adbusters. Great mag if you haven't checked it out.
mr. thompson
mr. thompson
Good going, Spike. There is the outrage one searches for. Cheers.
mr. thompson
thanks, i dont think, actually i know, i couldnt have said it better.
mr. thompson
Thompson might be the coolest person alive now since Burroughs died.
mr. thompson
I hate to mention his name... but Dennis Miller is endorsing Bush for President.
WILL SOMEBODY SHUT UP THAT BLITHERING ASSHOLE?!?
WILL SOMEBODY SHUT UP THAT BLITHERING ASSHOLE?!?
mr. thompson
who the hell is dennis miller anyway and when did he become the authority on politics? he might have taken his role on SNL a little bit too seriously. wasnt he a sportscaster too?
mr. thompson
That Adbusters is definitely a unique magazine. I went to the link Rabbit provided and found this article that summed up how I sometimes feel:
The War Doves
Every spring the bulls charge down the narrow alleys of the Spanish town of Pamplona, their thousand-pound bodies careering around corners, hooves clattering across paving stones, and before them runs a handful of individuals who have overcome their fears and leapt into the moment. In this essay the bulls represent the US administration and the runners are all of the people who, like me, have stepped away from the anti-war camp to support the new American empire. We can still hear our old allies, chanting and waving their tear-soaked handkerchiefs - they are the ones behind the wooden barricades that line the alleys, and we remember when we wasted our time in the same safe places.
Our lieutenant - our ringleader, our polestar - is Michael Ignatieff, the director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard. His dispatches from the red zones of Bosnia, Rwanda and Afghanistan give testament to the dead innocents, felled by collateral damage as well as by brutal dictators. He is probably the most cogent and nuanced popular thinker writing on liberalism and human rights today; as evidence I submit his opus, The Rights Revolution. And when his article "Empire: The Burden" headlined the red-white-and-blue bedecked New York Times Magazine on January 5, 2003, the anti-war crowd - from moderates to Leninists - responded with a resounding "Aw, crap." Why? Because it showed why principled realists must run with the bulls.
The article didn't waste time on whether "empire" is a word that applies to Superpower America - "the only nation that polices the world through five global military commands; maintains more than a million men and women at arms on four continents; deploys carrier battle groups on watch in every ocean; guarantees the survival of countries from Israel to South Korea; drives the wheels of global trade and commerce; and fills the hearts and minds of an entire planet with its dreams and desires." The interesting question, the important question, is whether you want to be a part of the debate about what kind of empire it is, or whether you prefer your useless histrionics well behind the barricades.
Ignatieff's article was published several months before the invasion of Iraq, but he knew what was coming. What's more, he approved. The journalist Christopher Hitchens, who has had his own messy divorce from his pacifist colleagues, drives the point home. "The plain fact remains that when the rest of the world wants anything done in a hurry, it applies to American power," he writes. "If the 'Europeans' or the United Nations had been left with the task, the European provinces of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo would now be howling wildernesses, Kuwait would be the 19th province of a Greater Iraq, and Afghanistan might still be under Taliban rule."
We may be wrong, we, the war doves, but here in the thick of the action it seems possible to exert some pressure. We can't turn back the bulls - no one can - but perhaps we can draw them away from a child standing stunned in the street. We can say, "I like where you're going, Mr. President, but you don't really want to provide cover for Ariel Sharon's attempt to turn Jenin into a latrine for Zionist settlers." (Bush would give us that famous squint - indicating firm resolve and a desperate attempt to focus on the teleprompter - and he would say something like, "What you counsel is not evil; it is good." And his - our! - will would be done.) Or we could argue, as Ignatieff has, that the US must pay as much attention to the humanitarian as to the military aspects of empire. We can argue, for example, that the US must redress the unforgivable imbalance in Afghanistan, where it spends $1 billion each month on military operations versus $25 million on aid.
Do you get it? This game cannot be played from the sidelines. Empire built on rolling military interventions and hard diplomacy has begun and it will continue. Of course the American empire is shaped by self-interest, cold ideology and crypto-fundamentalism. But there is also a sincere concern for those who live under the totalitarian thumb, a genuine decency and fraternity that we can try to crystallize. "The 21st century imperium is a new invention in the annals of political science," writes Ignatieff, "an empire lite, a global hegemony whose grace notes are free markets, human rights and democracy, enforced by the most awesome military power the world has ever known."
And here's a dirty secret. It feels good to be on the side of the bang and not the whimper. To be a part of the momentum and not the reaction. And yes, some innocents will be gored and trampled by the empire, but don't pretend that failure to act has no blood on its hands - take Srebrinica, say, or Rwanda. Let me tell you, it feels good to think, for once, "Saddam is directly responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths and we - we! - are going to take him down."
Ignatieff, Hitchens and all my new friends, we will run before the bulls with adrenaline howling in our blood and hoof thunder at our backs, and if we occasionally send wild-eyed looks over our shoulders at the leaping, snorting, hulking beasts of liberation, if you detect the dread and terror mixed amid our hope and pride, then you will suddenly understand why we run so goddamn fast.
Kris Johansen
From the July/August 2003 issue of Adbusters magazine.
The War Doves
Every spring the bulls charge down the narrow alleys of the Spanish town of Pamplona, their thousand-pound bodies careering around corners, hooves clattering across paving stones, and before them runs a handful of individuals who have overcome their fears and leapt into the moment. In this essay the bulls represent the US administration and the runners are all of the people who, like me, have stepped away from the anti-war camp to support the new American empire. We can still hear our old allies, chanting and waving their tear-soaked handkerchiefs - they are the ones behind the wooden barricades that line the alleys, and we remember when we wasted our time in the same safe places.
Our lieutenant - our ringleader, our polestar - is Michael Ignatieff, the director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard. His dispatches from the red zones of Bosnia, Rwanda and Afghanistan give testament to the dead innocents, felled by collateral damage as well as by brutal dictators. He is probably the most cogent and nuanced popular thinker writing on liberalism and human rights today; as evidence I submit his opus, The Rights Revolution. And when his article "Empire: The Burden" headlined the red-white-and-blue bedecked New York Times Magazine on January 5, 2003, the anti-war crowd - from moderates to Leninists - responded with a resounding "Aw, crap." Why? Because it showed why principled realists must run with the bulls.
The article didn't waste time on whether "empire" is a word that applies to Superpower America - "the only nation that polices the world through five global military commands; maintains more than a million men and women at arms on four continents; deploys carrier battle groups on watch in every ocean; guarantees the survival of countries from Israel to South Korea; drives the wheels of global trade and commerce; and fills the hearts and minds of an entire planet with its dreams and desires." The interesting question, the important question, is whether you want to be a part of the debate about what kind of empire it is, or whether you prefer your useless histrionics well behind the barricades.
Ignatieff's article was published several months before the invasion of Iraq, but he knew what was coming. What's more, he approved. The journalist Christopher Hitchens, who has had his own messy divorce from his pacifist colleagues, drives the point home. "The plain fact remains that when the rest of the world wants anything done in a hurry, it applies to American power," he writes. "If the 'Europeans' or the United Nations had been left with the task, the European provinces of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo would now be howling wildernesses, Kuwait would be the 19th province of a Greater Iraq, and Afghanistan might still be under Taliban rule."
We may be wrong, we, the war doves, but here in the thick of the action it seems possible to exert some pressure. We can't turn back the bulls - no one can - but perhaps we can draw them away from a child standing stunned in the street. We can say, "I like where you're going, Mr. President, but you don't really want to provide cover for Ariel Sharon's attempt to turn Jenin into a latrine for Zionist settlers." (Bush would give us that famous squint - indicating firm resolve and a desperate attempt to focus on the teleprompter - and he would say something like, "What you counsel is not evil; it is good." And his - our! - will would be done.) Or we could argue, as Ignatieff has, that the US must pay as much attention to the humanitarian as to the military aspects of empire. We can argue, for example, that the US must redress the unforgivable imbalance in Afghanistan, where it spends $1 billion each month on military operations versus $25 million on aid.
Do you get it? This game cannot be played from the sidelines. Empire built on rolling military interventions and hard diplomacy has begun and it will continue. Of course the American empire is shaped by self-interest, cold ideology and crypto-fundamentalism. But there is also a sincere concern for those who live under the totalitarian thumb, a genuine decency and fraternity that we can try to crystallize. "The 21st century imperium is a new invention in the annals of political science," writes Ignatieff, "an empire lite, a global hegemony whose grace notes are free markets, human rights and democracy, enforced by the most awesome military power the world has ever known."
And here's a dirty secret. It feels good to be on the side of the bang and not the whimper. To be a part of the momentum and not the reaction. And yes, some innocents will be gored and trampled by the empire, but don't pretend that failure to act has no blood on its hands - take Srebrinica, say, or Rwanda. Let me tell you, it feels good to think, for once, "Saddam is directly responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths and we - we! - are going to take him down."
Ignatieff, Hitchens and all my new friends, we will run before the bulls with adrenaline howling in our blood and hoof thunder at our backs, and if we occasionally send wild-eyed looks over our shoulders at the leaping, snorting, hulking beasts of liberation, if you detect the dread and terror mixed amid our hope and pride, then you will suddenly understand why we run so goddamn fast.
Kris Johansen
From the July/August 2003 issue of Adbusters magazine.
mr. thompson
McCutcheon ... you're like a broken record. Same tune, over & over. Damn it ... if you hate your own country that bad, either do something about it or leave! Bitching about it all day long while you get you get intoxicated in one form or two or three or four isn't helping at all. I have no problems with criticism of government. None what so ever. But, seriously, why do you do nothing more than bitch if it really is that bad for you? Campaign! Protest! Write a letter to the editor! Run for office! Leave! Do something productive rather than prophesize imminent doom. You could always run under the Green Party.
myke
myke
mr. thompson
there he goes, again
mr. thompson
Martino. Question: Has the full German government moved completely from Bonn to Berlin? I know they had decided to move the official capital back when Helmut Kohl was Chancellor but I didn't know if they moved all institutions there.
myke
PS -- Trust me ... I don't think McCutcheon takes an affront to me no more than I to him. Sometimes you can get nasty when having philosophical disagreements then 2 minutes later you're buying each other Jaegermeister shots.
myke
PS -- Trust me ... I don't think McCutcheon takes an affront to me no more than I to him. Sometimes you can get nasty when having philosophical disagreements then 2 minutes later you're buying each other Jaegermeister shots.
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mccutcheon
- New York Scribbler
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- Joined: Tue Oct 03, 2000 8:01 am
- Location: NYC
- Contact:
mr. thompson
I thought voicing my opinion on this BB was doing something constructive. I let my thoughts be know to the world. Take it or leave it.
Myke, I've created Pax Acidus. Wrote a novel. What have you done to/ for the world that didn't previously exist?
Myke, I've created Pax Acidus. Wrote a novel. What have you done to/ for the world that didn't previously exist?
mr. thompson
Wondabah (I don't think that's really a word or else I butchered the spelling), Mc. ... I musta struck a nerve relating to your feelings of self worth. Nice.
Just for the record, I was not implying your entire life was worthless or meaningless. I assume you thought so due to your justifications of things you've done. I was mainly just pointing to the constant digs at the political state of things, not personal life.
But since you went there ...
Never wrote a novel but have written many short stories and poems that got published in various college literary magazines. Also was a founding member of the Young Democrats on campus which was a big deal considering the conservative nature of the area I went to school in. As I'm big into animal rights and the environment, I have long served as a member of several animal rights organizations with work in my local area primarily helping to rehabilitate abused animals, act as a 'foster home' for dogs while a permanent home is found, and volunteering at various events to raise money to help animals stay out of kill shelters until homes could be found. I've also worked as a link in an interstate transfer system to get an adopted animal from one area of the country to another. Unfortunately, I don't have enough time to do as much environmental volunteering as I'd like so I volunteer letter writing to politicians to help persuade them to pass various pieces of environmental protection and animal rights legislation. Oh, and I worked on the "rock the vote" campaign a few years back which was key in getting the motor voter law passed. As for work, as I've said before, I'm a social worker for folks with developmental disabilities helping to link them with community based services thus avoiding likely institutionalization.
I'm sure as hell no saint. I just try to do my part or what I can. I also was simply trying to get across the point that constant bitching about the political/humanitarian state of the world is fine and dandy but if you really care about such an issue, try doing something ... anything ... about it other than spouting off. Glad you created Pax Acidus. I certainly like it. It's a good place to sound off. But there surely is more you can do if you think everything is going to hell in a handbasket (which is an old saying I never quite got).
myke
Just for the record, I was not implying your entire life was worthless or meaningless. I assume you thought so due to your justifications of things you've done. I was mainly just pointing to the constant digs at the political state of things, not personal life.
But since you went there ...
Never wrote a novel but have written many short stories and poems that got published in various college literary magazines. Also was a founding member of the Young Democrats on campus which was a big deal considering the conservative nature of the area I went to school in. As I'm big into animal rights and the environment, I have long served as a member of several animal rights organizations with work in my local area primarily helping to rehabilitate abused animals, act as a 'foster home' for dogs while a permanent home is found, and volunteering at various events to raise money to help animals stay out of kill shelters until homes could be found. I've also worked as a link in an interstate transfer system to get an adopted animal from one area of the country to another. Unfortunately, I don't have enough time to do as much environmental volunteering as I'd like so I volunteer letter writing to politicians to help persuade them to pass various pieces of environmental protection and animal rights legislation. Oh, and I worked on the "rock the vote" campaign a few years back which was key in getting the motor voter law passed. As for work, as I've said before, I'm a social worker for folks with developmental disabilities helping to link them with community based services thus avoiding likely institutionalization.
I'm sure as hell no saint. I just try to do my part or what I can. I also was simply trying to get across the point that constant bitching about the political/humanitarian state of the world is fine and dandy but if you really care about such an issue, try doing something ... anything ... about it other than spouting off. Glad you created Pax Acidus. I certainly like it. It's a good place to sound off. But there surely is more you can do if you think everything is going to hell in a handbasket (which is an old saying I never quite got).
myke
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mccutcheon
- New York Scribbler
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- Joined: Tue Oct 03, 2000 8:01 am
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mr. thompson
Sounds good Myke, I'll buy you a beer and a shot!
mr. thompson
Ok. cool beans. I like a fine Jamaican Laeger. Red Stripe is good. And Jose' Quervo is my best buddy for shots. Or Jaeger. Or straight Vodka. My tolerance is way down from a few years back, though. You'd drink me under the table.
It's damn wretchedly hot & humid here. Someone get a nice (I swear) southern social worker a job in the northwest! Please???
myke
It's damn wretchedly hot & humid here. Someone get a nice (I swear) southern social worker a job in the northwest! Please???
myke
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mccutcheon
- New York Scribbler
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mr. thompson
You know what happens to Empires? They fall, fail, crumble into oblivion. Keep running fast. Don't look back to see the poor, suffering of America.