True, no one casts themselves as the villain in their own life story. History is replete with villainy nonetheless, because we're adept at rationalizing our behavior and inept at objectivity about it. Stalin and Mao didn't consider themselves monsters any more than Breivik does, but their rose colored glasses don't change reality.

People do have enough objectivity that your clients don't tell you every dirty little secret of their lives. They surely tell you more than they'd like because it's necessary for you to provide effective legal counsel, but no one who knows all or most of hidden details of government and commerce has time to debate them with me on a fiction fan sites MB. Fact is, Harry Reid and John Boehner are no more likely to discuss that with you than with me or their cleaning lady, because the disparities between their legal and menal staff that seem so great to you are trivial to them. I believe you when you say you don't want more Obama because you're worried about providing for your family, but I assure you Mitt Romney and John McCain have no such worries. No one in a position to factually dispute a conspiracy, whether of circumstance or intent, does. I strongly recommend dispensing with that kind of elitism right now; you are not and never will be one of them, CAN'T be, no matter how many Romneys you vote for or subscriptions to The Economist you buy. To actual elitists you are as much a peon as I; the only difference is that one of us knows that.

Generally true, but obviously I mean that less positively. I'm sure a few fringe Republican candidates aren't privy to the SOP, but no viable ones, by definition.


That may be the most dangerous belief on the right today, that the fall of the Soviets faux communism forever discredited Marxism and eliminated the need to accept creeping socialism as an alternative to bloody communist revolutions. That incentive long provided some restraint and perspective; wealthy power brokers would only go just so far before relenting, lest going too far provoke the masses. Unfortunately, just as the absence of Soviet competition allowed the State Dept. to embrace torture and domestic spying as legitimate, it's allowed the return of robber barons convinced no one will ever again take any alternative seriously. Maybe you're right the current status quo won't spawn some modern day Che Guevara but, unless the trend is reversed, sooner or later the growing number of unemployed, homeless and hungry Americans will storm the Bastille. Marx and Engels didn't invent that, they simply analyzed it through the lens of history; their economic models are weaker for that perspective, but their historical models are correspondingly stronger.

As for socialism not working, don't tell that to Western Europe, or Canada. It's not a piñata of government giveaways, and places like Greece have suffered for treating it that way, but just because giving dead peoples social security benefits to their family isn't economically viable doesn't mean socialism itself is a failure. It's working fine in Scandinavia, except when Iceland let itself get suckered into the subprime mortgage disaster laissez-faire capitalism produced, but it's not like non-socialist countries did any better out of that, not even the one responsible for it. According to the WHO, as of 2000 France had the best healthcare on the planet (America was 37th, though we were first in healthcare SPENDING). Western Europes strong economic performance is typically dismissed on the grounds that socialism only works for small populations, but that's a bit untenable given that its population exceeds Americas by about 100 million, and its most potent members economically and otherwise are Britain (pop. 62 million), Germany (pop. 81 million) and France (pop. 65 million). Glancing over the list of countries by nominal GDP, socialism seems to do pretty well; even if we define China, Japan and India as "non-socialist", a narrow majority of the top ten countries are still socialist, and the EU as a whole has a higher GDP than the US. America could do a lot worse, and the current system isn't just "flawed", it's failing; not only has it done incredible damage to our own economy (with no sign that's abating), the damage it's done to the rest of the world threatens the EU economy even more than overly ambitious entitlement programs do.


I do; that's why I find it so bizarre when people like Perry and Bush try to make laissez-faire capitalism and rabid (selective) Christianity reasons to elect them.

As for the reality of tacit or other conspiracies in the GOP nomination, it speaks volumes that Romney's been the frontrunner from the start even though most of the base can't stand him. The oft villified 2.5% of the country that controls 90% of the nations wealth also controls the GOP presidential nomination; that's not "the market" deciding anything, it's the marketers deciding everything. What worries me is that the same applies to the Democratic nomination, and what it portends for a country that won't forever accept the consequences of that.