Progressives (Liberals)

Hitchins was already unpopular with opponents of the Iraq war for his support of the invasion a year previously. Nor did I ever hear anyone refer to the contrarian as "Hitch, the Snitch". After all a "snitch" is an informer so it wouldn't have made any sense.

I have been disheartened to note the disappearance of the sometimes delicious irony that once attended blatham's posts here. It's gone and has been replaced with increasingly venomous, anger and intolerance.

It is a remarkable and stunning example of the projection of their own preconceptions, refusals to consider alternatives, and narrow-minded prejudices directed at an imagined "vast right wing conspiracy" on those here, who even question their pronouncements, or who have the temerity to disagree with or lightheartedly mock their usually inflated and self-important pronouncements on current political affairs. That, combined with what appears to be an increasingly doctrinaire rejection of disagreement in any form or of any degree as necessarily emanating from the presumed bad intent of necessarily bad folks on "the right" - has become increasingly tiresome to me.

"I have a confession: I have at times, as the war has unfolded, secretly wished for things to go wrong," Gary Kamiya, executive editor of the left-leaning Internet journal Salon, wrote last week. Wished for the Iraqis to be more nationalistic, to resist longer.

Wished for the Arab world to rise up in rage. Wished for all the things we feared would happen. I'm not alone: A number of people who oppose the war have told me they have had identical feelings."

“Some of this is merely the result of pettiness -- ignoble resentment, partisan hackdom, the desire to be proved right and to prove the likes of Rumsfeld wrong, irritation with the sanitizing, myth-making American media...

But some of it is something trickier. Wishing for things to go wrong is the logical corollary of the postulate that the better things go for Bush, the worse they will go for America and the rest of the world. Pessimism is the dirty little secret of the antiwar camp -- dirty because there is something distasteful about wishing for bad outcomes.”

Some 430,000 people flew from China to US after coronavirus first detected

About 430,000 people have flown on direct flights from China to the United States since Chinese officials first disclosed the outbreak of what is now the novel coronavirus to world health officials on New Year’s Eve, according to a new report published Saturday.

Most of the travelers flew into airports in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Seattle, Newark and Detroit in January. Thousands came directly from the city of Wuhan in the Chinese Hubei province, where the coronavirus originated, the New York Times reported.

The report did not account for travelers who did not fly directly from China and may have come into the U.S. on a connecting flight from the country.

After mocking Trump for promoting hydroxychloroquine, journalists acknowledge it might treat coronavirus

"Trump peddles unsubstantiated hope in dark times," read a March 20 "analysis" by CNN's Stephen Collinson. Saying Trump was "adopting the audacity of false hope" and embracing "premature optimism," Collinson charged that "there's no doubt he overhyped the immediate prospects for the drug" because the FDA had not provided an explicit timeline on approving the drug to treat coronavirus.

Trump is giving people false hope of coronavirus cures. "It’s all snake oil," read one Washington Post headline. Added the Post's editorial board: "Trump is spreading false hope for a virus cure -- and that’s not the only damage."

USA Today's editorial board was similarly aggressive and mocking, writing, "Coronavirus treatment: Dr. Donald Trump peddles snake oil and false hope."

Salon called Trump's hope in the new treatment his "most dangerous flim-flam: False hope and quack advice."

The New Yorker pondered "The Meaning of Donald Trump’s Coronavirus Quackery," observing that Trump's "pronouncements are a reminder, if one was needed, of his scorn for rigorous science, even amid the worst pandemic to hit the U.S. in a century."

NBC News complained, "Trump, promoting unproven drug treatments, insults NBC reporter at coronavirus briefing."

In fact, the Food and Drug Administration has approved the drug on an emergency basis, even before various media reports had Trump's suggestion. Media outlets' misinformation on hydroxychloroquine was unique because it involved not simply policy disagreements but also suggestive medical advice and directives that could have dissuaded some from seeking certain treatments.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, went from threatening doctors who prescribed the drug with "administrative action" to requesting that the federal government ship her state some.

I gave this some more thought as I was engaged in removing the nests of brown-tailed moths from a local infestation. Look, georgeob1, I make posts which reflect my concerns, not to please people who accuse me of exhibiting narrow-mindedness, projection, and derangement.

I find that writing about issues helps me to order my thoughts on the off chance that I might have occasion to actually discuss them in person. After posting here for a while I discovered that there were others who felt similarly about problems afflicting our country and the world and over time I began to think of my posts as part of an online conversation with those who shared my viewpoint or were at least interested in what I had to say.

I'm not here to try to convince Trump supporters of anything. If you find my posts factually wrong go ahead and say so by all means. But don't expect me to tailor my responses to suit you. If you want to attempt to find common ground or areas of partial agreement, then don't start right off by being condescending. And if you find me increasingly tiresome you can simply state your disagreement or ignore me entirely. You're simply not part of the target audience I have in mind when it comes to political conversation. Spare me the armchair psychology, I'm not interested.

What makes you think Hitchens "turned extreme right?"

In 2006, in a town hall meeting in Pennsylvania debating the Jewish Tradition with Martin Amis, Hitchens commented on his political philosophy by stating, "I am no longer a socialist, but I still am a Marxist". In a June 2010 interview with The New York Times, he stated that "I still think like a Marxist...

According to Andrew Sullivan, his last words were "Capitalism, downfall."

He realised he was not a socialist any longer around three years ago. "Often young people ask me for political advice, and when you are talking to the young, you mustn't bullshit. It's one thing when you are sitting with old comrades to talk about reviving the left, but you can't say that to somebody who is just starting out. And what could I say to these people? I had to ask myself - is there an international socialist movement worth the name? No. No, there is not. Okay - will it revive? No, it won't. Okay then - but is there at least a critique of capitalism that has a potential for replacing it? Not that I can identify."

"If the answer to all these questions is no, then I have no right to go around calling myself a socialist. It's more like an affectation."
[...]
He explains by talking about the origins of his relationship with the neconservatives in Washington. "I first became interested in the neocons during the war in Bosnia-Herzgovinia. That war in the early 1990s changed a lot for me. I never thought I would see, in Europe, a full-dress reprise of internment camps, the mass murder of civilians, the reinstiutution of torture and rape as acts of policy. And I didn't expect so many of my comrades to be indifferent - or even take the side of the fascists."

"It was a time when many people on the left were saying ?Don't intervene, we'll only make things worse' or, ?Don't intervene, it might destabilise the region.'", he continues. "And I thought - destabilisation of fascist regimes is a good thing. Why should the left care about the stability of undemocratic regimes? Wasn't it a good thing to destabilise the regime of General Franco?"

"It was a time when the left was mostly taking the conservative, status quo position - leave the Balkans alone, leave Milosevic alone, do nothing. And that kind of conservatism can easily mutate into actual support for the aggressors. Weimar-style conservatism can easily mutate into National Socialism," he elaborates. "So you had people like Noam Chomsky's co-author Ed Herman go from saying ?Do nothing in the Balkans', to actually supporting[ital] Milosevic, the most reactionary force in the region."

"That's when I began to first find myself on the same side as the neocons."
... ... ... ...

I never thought I would see, in Europe, a full-dress reprise of internment camps, the mass murder of civilians, the reinstiutution of torture and rape as acts of policy. And I didn't expect so many of my comrades to be indifferent - or even take the side of the fascists."

I thought - destabilisation of fascist regimes is a good thing. Why should the left care about the stability of undemocratic regimes?

"That's when I began to first find myself on the same side as the neocons."

The left is so quick to turn on someone if they deviate in any way from even one of it's popular beliefs. After that, the deviant is a "right-wing extremist" in their manichean perspective.

While purporting to espouse tolerance and diversity, they are in fact the most intolerant creatures on earth and they detest true "divrersity.

And, yeah, I'm talking to you Ollie. And your like-minded comrades, of course.

Once a hero of the intellectual left, Christopher Hitchens' endorsement of George Bush has provoked a bitter schism. Is he forever lost to his former comrades?

To many of Christopher Hitchens' old friends, he died on September 11th 2001. Tariq Ali considered himself a comrade of Christopher Hitchens for over thirty years. Now he speaks about him with bewilderment:

"On 11th September 2001, a small group of terrorists crashed the planes they had hijacked into the Twin Towers of New York. Among the casualties, although unreported that week, was a middle-aged Nation columnist called Christopher Hitchens. He was never seen again," Ali writes.

This encapsulates how many of Hitchens' old allies - a roll-call of the left's most distinguished intellectuals, from Edward Said to Noam Chomsky - now view him.

The neocons are extreme right, the way I see it.

The left is so quick to turn on someone if they deviate in any way from even one of it's popular beliefs. After that, the deviant is a "right-wing extremist" in their manichean perspective.

Quote:

my comrades

Do you have a point you're trying to make, Walt?