Look. When Iraq was invaded, the US Army committed the exact same war crime for which most Nazis were hung at Nuremburg. The US attacked a country which offered the US no threat.
The only defenses are the “Good German” defense and the “We didn’t know” argument (really the “I couldn’t be bothered to actually pay attention” argument). Or, perhaps, the “They keep us in a cage and feed us propaganda argument.”
But Iraq was a war crime. Once in Iraq, the US military deliberately targeted civilians, engaged in torture, and so on.
(I am fundraising to determine how much I’ll write this year. If you value my writing, and want more of it, please consider donating.)
Are people seriously wringing their hands about the prospect of Trump “making” the US military commit torture, and killing the families of its enemies, as if the US has not already done both?
Oh yes, hitting all those weddings and funerals with drones wasn’t “meant” to kill civilian members of the family. No, sir. It just happened to.
Over and over and over again.
Trump is only tearing off the pretense. If the US military revolts against his orders, it will not be because of what he is ordering, but because he does not leave them a fig-leaf pretense of honor, and because internal factions want to take him down, not because they give one fig about committing war crimes.
Trump’s crime is his refusal to veil his monstrosity with hypocrisy.
markfromireland
No they’re doing it just for show, so that they can feel good about themselves.
Farpoint
Trump’s crime is his refusal to veil his monstrosity with hypocrisy
They basically admitted that the drone strike on al-Awaki’s teenage son was in retaliation for things his father did. So there isn’t even that.
Hugh
This election is about the tearing away of veils. (Interesting that the root meaning of apocalypse is removing the veil.) It’s happening in both parties. The difference is that Sanders mutes his criticisms and is in turn muted by the media, whereas Trump aims to be over the top and gets a lot of play in the media, despite the media’s best efforts to end his campaign.
Of course, the hypocrisy abounds. The US does not torture. We engage in enhanced interrogation techniques. Just ask the NYT which never uses the word torture for what the US does, but only for what other countries do. Still don’t believe me? Heck, just ask anyone in the Democratic and Republican Establishment. WE DO NOT TORTURE. Only uninformed people, like ordinary Americans, say we torture. And of those who not only say it but support it, many like Trump. Tell them that torture doesn’t work, that it means descending to the same level as those they hate, and that it opens the door to bad guys justifying the torture of Americans, and all you will get is shrugged shoulders or a so what? Why? Because logic is insufficient. People need to believe in something or someone. If you can not offer them something worth believing in, they will believe in something or someone (Trump) not worth believing.
So yes, it’s funny in a black humor kind of way, that those who have plunged the country into a series of endless, pointless wars come down on Trump for his poor foreign policy. Or that Wall Street financiers whose looting drove the world economy over a cliff 7 years ago decry Trump’s economic plans. Or my personal favorite, those who condemn Trump’s accepting support from white supremacists while they have for years engaged in suppression and disenfranchisement of minority voters through voter ID programs and the “purging” of minority voters from voting rolls. Trump is like the proverbial bull in the china shop smashing right and left all the pretty euphemisms the Establishment has so carefully and lovingly crafted. And it’s funny too that the Republicans though they are being dragged kicking and screaming to do it, are proving more honest and more democratic than the Democrats both in their process and their language.
But in a larger sense, it is not funny at all. The world and the US have about 15 years to be solidly on a path to sustainable populations and societies to deal with the century’s existential problems of overpopulation, resource overuse, and environmental destruction (which includes climate disruption). Nobody in our political Establishment, not Trump or Clinton or Sanders, is even bothering to mention these threats, or even the more immediate challenges of kleptocracy, class war, and wealth inequality (OK, Sanders does talk about wealth inequality, but not in a coherent way). Unless something changes, and in a big way, we and our children are, come 2030, screwed. After that, it is auto-pilot to the apocalypse, with or without veils.
markfromireland
The more I think about this the less likely I think it ever to occur and that’s not just because those making the “threat” have no locus standi. The current American officer corps has very little conception of honour and a very highly developed one of career path. The colonisation, no on second thoughts not colonisation, the infestation of the C3 with MBAs and similar has had even an more disastrous upon the American military than the equivalent process did upon American industry. There were always a certain amount of “perfumed princes” in the American 3c structures but they now predominate. So long as such men have a fig leaf of legality they will obey any order given them including orders requiring them to do to Americans that which they’ve been doing to rag heads, muzzys, and other assorted sand niggers literally for decades now.
Tell me Ian do you remember Mohammed Ibn Laith? A while before he was murdered his father, my good friend Laith, wrote this:
V. Arnold
Wow. Mark; you’re 100% right on.
You cut through the bullshit straight to the point!
The U.S. has no moral standing in today’s world; none!!
And, I do not see a remedy, in any near future…
Dan Lynch
Agree with Ian. So Trump supports torture (he recently took it back). Well, the US has tortured right up until the Obama administration, at which point Obama replaced torture with assassination. Assassinations are more ethical how?
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So Trump says mean things about immigrants. How is that more unethical than what Obama and the Clintons have done to destabilize Mexico, Honduras, Syria, Libya, etc., that caused the waves of immigration in the first place ?
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So Trump refuses to condemn the KKK — just as Bill Clinton refused to condemn the KKK. Never mind that Harry Truman applied for KKK membership and Woodrow Wilson was a KKK fanboy. Never mind that those same white racists voted for FDR and for LBJ back when the Democratic party actually gave a hoot about the working class. There would have been no New Deal coalition without white racists.
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In general, the establishment argument against Trump is that he says unpleasant things. The same kinds of things that your plumber says, that your uncle says, and that your coworkers say, except there’s an unspoken rule that politicians are not supposed to say them.
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There are legitimate problems with Trump, but his being politically incorrect is not one of them.
fdf
Launched the most ferocious crackdown on whistle-blowers in the entire history of American government, and all the torture… just… “went away”…
nihil obstet
Obama doesn’t see torture.
Ian Welsh
Oh, I expect you are right, MFI. I don’t expect them to disobey, but if they did that would be why.
I do remember Mohammed Ibn Laith. I hope there is a heaven for him.
I have discussed (though I’m not sure I’ve written), in the past, the problem of demobbing. America’s miltary, police, intelligence apparatus and prison guards need to be substantially demobilized, but that has to be done very carefully, because they have been trained to be brutal and cruel. It cannot be done into a bad economy, or without care for their outcomes or they will become mafia.
S Brennan
Good one Mark;
“….remember something else. A people and their army who behave like this* abroad invariably bring this criminal and brutish behavior home and turn it against their own people. It is not only revolutions that eat their own.”
* “The most violent and brutal death squads of all are the ones bought, and paid for, and trained, by the Americans”, but let me give that some agency, Albright/Cheney/Obama/Hillary are Satan’s little demons in this latter day version of neo-colonialism aka “regime change”.
Lisa
More on (and apart from some silly comments quite a good article) the USSR style death rate increase in white low/working/lower middle class males and how this is driving Trump and Samders success.
Death [rate] predicts whether people vote for Donald Trump
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/04/death-predicts-whether-people-vote-for-donald-trump/
They have seen a monetary collapse in wages, collapse in jobs available and a decline in their ‘social wage’ (their relative importance and privilege compared to other lower groups).
Just as happened in the USSR many cannot handle it and they kill themselves.
Now if we take the example of Russia what happened was a demographic collapse which only revesered with the incredible increase in the standard of living during the Putin era.
Russia was very fortunate in getting Putin who is competent, though note he was not seen as a ‘strong man’ at all when first in power, he was supposed to be a ‘weak’ leader easily manipulated. Ooops.
However the society still suffers scars from that time with scarily high levels of religiosity and social conservatism that if they don’t get under control is going to cause them a shit load of future problems. We are already seeing the standard white hetero male majority, who have more than reclaimed their jobs and monetary wages, trying to get their ‘social wage’ back over various minorities (especially but not only LGBTI).
If we extrapolate that to the US, someone who promises higher monetary wages and social wages is going to be popular to that group, duh. The trouble there though is demographics, the proportion of affected white males is just too low as compared to the various non white groups and, most impotantly, women. Who are not going to be impressed at someone attempting to wind their relative gains back.
Now the Democratic party has been brilliant at neutralising the African American and feminist mainstream elites, which has benefited the GOP more than the Dems, but there are increasing signs of new grassroots bodies growing up in response to this.
Picking the feminists (who I know more about) their elite co-opting has allowed the GOP to demonise poorer women and make astonishing and cruel attacks on their reproductive rights and specfic health needs right across the country.
The outcome of this has not been what the social conservtives have wanted though.
Their idea is simple, make things really dfficult for women so they have they become ‘good little wives’ dependent on a man or starve. Keep kicking women back to the kitchen.
As long as this is just poor and coloured women the Dem elites are quite happy with that as long as the elite (and nearly all white) women have all their rights and opportunities.
What has actually happened is that women are just rejecting men full stop and building their own lives. An amazing demographic line has just been crossed where their are more single women than those in long term relationships in the US. Obviously there are differences across the class/race spectrum but it is a general trend.
No surprise that the highest marriage rates and lowest divorce rates are between elite men and elite women, where the relationships are the most equal.
The trouble is that while women have changed too many men, even now, in the lower to middle classes still expect a ‘mum’ to look after them domestically while still bringing in an income…not the best deal on offer. So why bother, especially if they are some sort of msogynist tosser.
No surprise either that countries that have created the greatest support for women and have lower misogyny rates, especially for mothers, have higher long term relationship rates.
But amongst younger US women, watching and knowing all this, they have an increasingly hgh rejection rate of the mainstrem Dems, co-opted feminist organisations and an abhorrence of the ever nore misogynist GOP (which seems to have declared war on women).
So this is a key demographic that both the elites in the Dems and GOP are ignoring as well as Trump. Only Sanders has a real chance with them. They are going to play a massive part in the real election.
S Brennan
I can’t agree enough with Lisa, the whole problem has been poorer working class white males over the age of 50.
As a kid I remember the stinking working class white male bastards charging the gates of the Pentagon to start a war Viet Nam, a lot of folks have been propagandized into believing it was the .01% who wanted to fatten their stock value, but you and I know better, it was working class white boys that started the whole thing…just so they could get drafted and die in the rice paddies of Viet Nam. Thank goodness upper class kids [after hearing their student deferments would no longer ensure that “they better things to do”] put an end to the white working class war we remember erroneously as Viet Nam.
Fortunately, the entire problem will solve itself in 20 years..YaHoo!!!
We can see this already, Hillary, Thatcher, Rice, Powers, Nuland, Albright, Obama, each fought tooth and nail to end war, to bring economic justice…it was awe inspiring…my mouth is still agape at their Herculean efforts to bring justice around the world to women and brown people. And don’t take my word for it, just ask the women & brown people of Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Guatemala & Syria. The record is clear, it’s just demographics, get rid of poorer working class white males and justice will prevail! Right On Lisa!
Lisa
Dont be so sarcastic, I said ages ago that many of them would vote for Sanders if he was the candidate but that many will vote for Trump vs HRC as, at the very least, a protest vote against the establishment. Many will have been Dem voters in the past.
Others will have drunk the right wing social conservative kool aid in the past. Be all bitter and twisted blaming non-whites, women and LGBTI people for their woes.
But in a Trump vs HRC they will vote en masse for him. So assuming the GOP/Dem voters go the way they usually do, then it will be women and, to a lesser extent younger men, that decide it.
If they, as I suspect, don’t vote for HRC then Trump wins.
Sanders would split that male vote, some old time Dems would come back to the fold and the female and younger vote are all for Sanders. For once some of the evangelicals might not turn out if Trump doesn’t suck up to them enough.
Don’t give them too much credit though, it has long been observed how many of those white lower/working/lower middle class men have repeatedly voted against their own economic interests because of their social conservatism and desire to keep their ‘social wage’ and been played like violins over that.
The Houston HERO vote was a classic, after which a disabled veteran conplained about descrimination to be told that the very bill that would have prevented that had been thrown out…and yes he had voted against it because of ‘trans bathroom’ panic. At the time of the vote he was happy to throw away his interests to block some others getting theirs, then regretted it later, very hard to have sympathy in a situation like that.
They’ve had the ability to fight for their own economic interests for ages and refused to do so.
When you see some of them being interviewed, jumping up and down about some other group ‘getting too much money’ or ‘rights’…while happy to accept their benefits it is hard to have much sympathy. They’ve been happy to fight for their ‘social wage’ by poking out their own eyes sometimes. Taking the most extreme (and often hypocrtical) of them the evangelicals, if they had poured a fraction of the energy they have expended demonstrating outside Planned Parenthood, giving lots of women a real hard time, into economic related activities they would be a lot better off. Maybe they should have demonstrated for unions instead?
S Brennan
Right, so skip the boutique approach to civil rights and go to the meat & potatoes of the matter.
If the Dems vote for Hillary, they are effectively putting Trump in the White House…
…except I think the deep state plan is for Trump to meet his end in a DBA and have Hillary swept into power. Dems will be overjoyed with such a public execution and gratefully accept Hillary’s direction into a permanent Staci State…so long as it has a [D] behind it.
We’ve 16 years of UNINTERRUPTED wars of aggression, OPENLY engaging in war crimes that have murdered millions of innocent civilians to no discernible gain for the lower 99%.
Of this years crop only three people have any issue with that. Webb, who was ignored by the media, [but he was a white male so it’s okay], Sanders to a lessor extent, [but he was a white male so it’s okay] and Trump who can’t be silenced, so he has been criticized using the old RACIST & reductio ad hitlerum routine.
Then we have a lone woman. A woman who, because she is a woman, is virtuous…except it is by her hand that 350,000 INNOCENT civilians departed this earth, it is by her hand, four wars were started using racists terrorists to create so much terror that in their wake Europe is being inundated with terrified civilians literally running away from Hillary’s implemented policies. And whose crimes were revealed that sent the now imprisoned whistle blowers to prison. A woman who, because she is a woman, is virtuous, what a stinking pile of bullshit.
When I see the reductio ad hitlerum routine being used on Trump, I think to myself of the war crimes of Bush/Obama/Hillary and ask, who is more like Hitler? Those in power, who have gleefully murdered millions, to the polite applause of “liberals” with their “worthy” social causes, or some rich jerk complaining about the bonfires being set alight across the globe?
Lisa
This is a great article that shows perfectly some of the points I have been making:
Please read carefully.
Note the number who say they would vote for Sanders if they could.
‘Not even my wife knows’: secret Donald Trump voters speak out
Snippets:
Here s a perfect one showing the classic middle class male resentment from loss of ‘social wage’. The poor dear has been used to a postion of authority, where his (mostly toxic) opinions counted, now he is all resentful because people tell him to shut up. (I’ve known people like thus).
The anti-PC college professor (50, California)
“I’m angry at forced diversity and constant, frequently unjustified complaints about racism/sexism/homophobia/lack of trans rights. I’m particularly angry at social justice warriors and my main reason to vote Trump is to see the looks on your faces when he wins.
It’s not that I like Trump. It’s that I hate those who can’t stand him. I want them to suffer the shock of knowing all their torrents of blog posts and Tumblr bitch-fests and “I just can’t …” and accusations of mansplaining didn’t actually matter. That they’re still losing. And that things are not getting better for them. They’re getting worse.”
More social wage resentment with bordeline ‘Authoritarianism
The Hispanic attorney (29, Florida)
‘He has demonstrated that he is, at heart, a caring person’
Before he ran, the left’s stranglehold on the national conversation of what is or isn’t tolerable was getting stronger by the minute. It was the year of Caitlyn Jenner. Rachel Dolezal. Black Lives Matter. Anyone who even hinted at disapproval was exiled. Every week, someone would dare to blurt out something un-PC, and the media would absolutely crucify them. It had me thinking this was it. We’ve lost.
How on earth can we hope to defeat these people, with their complete domination of the national conversation and relentless narrative of “Progress! Tolerance! Acceptance! Feels!”?
Political correctness is the birthplace of disastrous, un-American policies that will destroy the country in a death by a thousand cuts.”
More thoughful, talking about the loss of monetary wages.
The white male early retiree (62, Delaware)
‘Trump is a wake up call’
“Trump is a wake up call. A president Trump could be as bad as Hitler, but if he shocks some good people in both the Republican and Democratic parties into realizing that they are ignoring legitimate concerns of a seizable minority, then let him have his four years.”
The Indian-American attorney who is part of the 1% (50, Illinois)
‘It’s a very economics-driven decision’
“Cheap immigrant/HB1 visa labor is killing the standard of living for Americans, leading to general unhappiness and dissatisfaction. It’s a very economics-driven decision for me.”
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/03/secret-donald-trump-voters-speak-out
adidas neo lite racer heren
StageDoorAess.BangYouLater. You will even find out that baseball memorabilia and sports collectibles have spread into the Christmas decorations, with entire villages and decorations for the tree to the roof of your sports fans home.Apart from academic curriculum, the colleges of Oklahoma University are popular for conducting extracurricular activities like sport activity and athletics. Through the late 1990′s, sixty percent of females had been having common mammograms, and also the common
Lisa
Wake up call for the Dems
“About 7,000 Mahoning County voters have cast early votes. Early voting started Feb. 17 and ends March 14, the day before the primary.
Of those 7,000, about 14 percent were Democrats who voted Republican, Kale-Pesta said. That’s about 1,000 so far.
The percentage of Democrats switching parties will grow even more, said board Vice Chairman David Betras, who also is the county Democratic chairman.”
And in a perfect example of wishful thinking:
” “But once they learn about his record – besides him being anti-trade – they will change their minds in the general election.”
http://www.vindy.com/news/2016/mar/03/mahoning-co-sees-k-voters-defect-to-gop/?newswatch
What happens when you are co-opted:
The Bogus Power of the Black Vote Within the Confines of the Democratic Party
““Black Power” devolves to a shuffling and clustering around the most well-healed, right-wing Democratic candidate vetted by Wall Street.”
The question of self-determination lies at the heart of the political crisis in Black America. If masses of Blacks at this point in history cannot overcome a mind-twisting fear of the Republican/White Man’s Party, to vote their own, thoroughly documented leftist politics in national elections, then activists should treat the duopoly process, itself, like poison. History shows us that the Black self-determinationist imperative blooms and thrives in movement politics – the only kind of politics that can circumvent and ultimately overcome the entrenched and morally defective Black Misleadership Class, who are inextricably entwined with the Democratic Party and its rich financiers.”
http://blackagendareport.com/bogus_power_of_black_vote
Lisa
Best comments made on the Guardian article;
“Yes, and they felt pressured to go along with concepts like Tolerance! It’s amazing that somebody could say or write that, even anonymously, and not have a second thought.”
This sums it up perfectly, what ‘social wage’ really means:
‘”We need to Make America Great Again, go back to the days when one could be an openly bigoted prick without receiving any guff for it.”
S Brennan
Yes Lisa;
“Hillary, Thatcher, Rice, Powers, Nuland, Albright, Obama, each fought tooth and nail to end war, to bring economic justice…it was awe inspiring…my mouth is still agape at their Herculean efforts to bring justice around the world to women and brown people. And don’t take my word for it, just ask the women & brown people of Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Guatemala & Syria. The record is clear, it’s just demographics, get rid of poorer working class white males and justice will prevail! Right On Lisa!
Lisa
S Brennan : Not sure what you are arguing, politicians having been playing to different sections of society since politics was invented.
Of course different demographic types have different interests and, of course, a lot of common ones.
For example: If you are a male you have zero vested interest in reproductive rights and access to such things. I means do you directly care about pap smears, or breast exams, gettting contraception and all the rest. Of course not. You have a vested interest in no money for those and a tax cut for you.
Somehow society has to negotiate and compromise all those varying interests.
Now traditionally there has been a 2D hierarchy, white males (down through the various classes) have had more of their interests looked after at the expense of others. Worse, they have thought it their right to make the decisions for others as their opinion is ‘worth more’ than those other groups. So the access and allocaton of those were not under the control of the people directly affected.
Do you know how infuriating that is? Especially when total ignorance is added. ” No little girl you should not get the vaccination against the herpes virus, just don’t have sex”…and all that nonsense. I read a case recently where a manager (white, male) was giving his women workers a hard time for going to the toilet too much when they had their periods because (get this) “he thought a woman could turn them on and off at will”.
And no group is more willing to tell others what to do and how to live their lives than white males, no matter what their ignorance.
Hence the term ‘mansplaining’.
That’s called ‘privilege’ and the ‘social wage’. Don’t worry, males in other groups are just as willing to do the same to those beneath them (another ethnic group, or..as always..women and LGBTI).
Now those other demographic groups (or at least some) are fighting for their own slice of the pie and the right to control their lives.
I am a transgender women and I am struck by those two types of people most against me are
(a) TERFs (a subset of so called feminists that hate transgender women, think Germain Greer)
(b) Older man, mostly (but not always) white.
Ignoring the nut jobs in (a), the (b) group are certain that they know better than I do about myself. Their habit of being in charge and telling others what to do and think is so strong they cannot just listen and learn, or at least shut up, and they have no concept of politeness whatsoever, they think their bigotry and dergogatory comments are ‘considered opinion’ that they have a ‘right’ to make.
Take this common exchange:
WM “You are mentally ill”.
Me: Explains all the science and background and issues, with links.
WM: “You are mentally ill and should be compulsarily treated”.
Me: Giving up being nice after trying to explain for ages: “You are an ignorant fool”.
WM: “Why are you being so insulting and bullying to me”.
I wish I was joking about that exchange but it happens all the time.
I had a depressing FB ‘conversation’ with mostly that type of group about domestic violence and they just could not accept one litle bit that most domestic violence is caused by men and most violence against men is from other men. It was all a big feminist plot to them, ‘political correctness’, SJWs and all the rest. Amazing their denseness, but it was self serving denseness. Just deny an issue and it will go away sort of thing and anyway, ‘what does it matter just a bunch of whinging women’ ……. Anything to stop having to take a cold hard look at themselves and their own responsibility.
But in these and so many other issues people are refusing to take it any more. So the demographic splits have widened into chasms in some areas.
At each class level, white males have been in the top position (social wage again). Provided that 2D hierarchy was maintained those at the lower levels have been happy to have their economic interests destroyed by those (mostly other white males) further up the class level.
Now it is coming to a crunch, firstly a slow realistion that they have been sold a bill of goods by their upper class equivalents, secondly that the horizontal part of the hierarchy has broken down.
This has caused massive shock wave and a slow enlightenment…and enlightenment is nearly always painful. Some cannot handle it and they end themselves.
Maybe they should not have been so quick to drink the cool aid and support the destruction of unions for example? But that sort of enlightenment hurts because it requires admitting failure and their very energetic contribution to destroying unions through their working life.
A heck of a lot of them put a lot of work into destroying said unions.
Same here in Australia, I remember the arguments I had with many working class men in the 80s who had become totally anti-union, enthusistically cutting their own throats.
Painful enlightenment that they are not so special after all, that they can be and are treated just as badly as those further down the pecking order and that male loyalty between classes does not exist.
Painful enlightenment for all those voting for decades for cuts in social welfare for those ‘losers’…now needing such social welfare.
Hurts to realise your whole life has been wrong.
And some are handling it better than others. Some (like the person quoted in the Guardian article) just want their social wage back and the women, gays, trans etc all put in their places again so he can go back to lording it over them, spouting bigotry as ‘wisdom’.
Others have (finally) awoken to the economic realities, though most have no idea what to do about it.
And of course there has been a small minorty (of all types) who have been warning about it and fighting against it … heck I did since the 70s, for all the good it did, except the pleasure of saying ‘I told you so’ at times. It was like spitting on a forest fire.
And there is another change, not noticed by many since the neo-liberal take over in the 80s. As men drank the kool aid and became more conservative, women (traditionally conservative) became more left wing, younger women extremely so. And that factor and their numbers is why they will decide the US election, one way or another.
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
I thought “social wage” meant the welfare state for the common citizen.
I think a better phrase for Lisa to use would be “psychological wage”, as in DuBois’s “The Psychological Wages of Whiteness”.
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
But yes, many of my fellow pale males are, ahem, mucking forons for choosing the social (or psychological) wages of the traditional order over the material wages of social democracy.
Lisa
IBW: Dead right, drinking the kool aid did not pay off for them one litte bit.
Nothing new in this. People were warning about this back in the 80s, those idiots applauding Thatcher for banning LGBTI info for kids…while losing their jobs (and turning a blind eye to all the paedophiles in the Conservative Party). Unreal.
The great con job…and the great bunch of idiots that fell for it hook line and sinker.
I so remember the arguments I had back then. I couldn’t believe people would be so dumb. And the war fever over the Falklands.
Good point about “psychological wage”, I’ll use that in future to avoid confusion. I pinched it from somewhere else.
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
@Lisa:
I understood what you meant by “social wage”, but someone else might become confused, thinking you were denouncing the social-democratic welfare state, and so mistake you for a right-winger.
Neither of us would want to be mistaken for a right-winger. (Eeeeuwww!)
Lisa
IBW: Thank you. Eeeeuwww indeed.