[PrestonSturges]

I was reading an old Alcoholics Anonymous book the other day and they were commenting on how alcoholics were "defiant" and frequently atheists who were pissed off with God because he never gave them what they wanted. Of course the Bible has a whole book (Job) explaining that this is how things work.

Fast forward 50 years, and churches are packed with addictive personalities. Many people looked at Bush and immediately said "That guy is a freaking drunk. He may not have had a drink in years, but he's obviously an untreated addict and real a**hole." Churchgoers declared W "filled with the Holy Spirit" and painted murals in the foyer of the church showing W arm in arm with Aryan Jesus.

See now we have the "prosperity gospel" where you are in charge of God, who owes you stuff, like his and her jet skis. And various Millenialists are embracing the idea that they control when the world will end and they control God by checking off the items on the echatology to-do list, and idea previously reserved for insane violent terrorist doomsday cults.

Get it? These churches have embraced heretical beliefs about a weak and diminshed God which makes them attractive to the unrecovered addicts' totally egocentric personality.

[pedalling_faster]

another Red Herring from Mos.

even my apolitical younger brother is savvy enough to comment that the Dem's and the Repub's seem to be 2 sides of the same coin.

Mos sees Right-wingers on PeakOil.com, and makes up fancy terms like "neo-anti-Semitism".

what Right-wingers ? I just see a bunch of people who are interested in preparing for Peak Oil and related phenomena.

i was a lifelong Democrat - until Obama came along. now i'm an independent who believes in protecting the environment and giving a break to the working poor - while also getting along with my few wealthy friends who identify themselves as "conservative Republicans".


Right-wing/ left-wing, Republican/ Democrat, are just diversions from what's going on in the background, e.g. the dominance of corporations like Monsanto, and groups like AIPAC, who are happy to send American gentiles (who are mostly Christians) to kill Muslims in Iraq & Afghanistan.

then, fifth-Columnists will come along and whine about "anti-Semitism", by trying to sell the concept that Joe Six-pack Jewish person is somehow the same as criminals who hide in the Jewish church, that criticizing the criminal behavior of the latter somehow constitutes racism against the former.

it's a semi-clever rhetorical trick, but it only works so many times.

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pedalling_faster', '
')even my apolitical younger brother is savvy enough to comment that the Dem's and the Repub's seem to be 2 sides of the same coin.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pedalling_faster', '
')
i was a lifelong Democrat - until Obama came along. now i'm an independent who believes in protecting the environment and giving a break to the working poor

[evilgenius]

There are a lot of threads running through this topic. One is the conversion to the knowledge economy worldwide that has to an extent disenfranchised nations. Another is the turbulent (decisive) lack of respect for education. Another is the dominance of the male psyche in decision making to such an extent that it excuses abusive behaviors and attitudes. Another is, yes, the sad continuance of victimizing behaviors by those who were victims. But wait, that's not all, now there is the very real threat of climate change and peak oil forcing people to reassess.

I've got this narcissistic friend who swears that there is no peak oil or agw. I understand narcissists because my own mother is one. They have to be right and are compelled by the knowledge that they are right. Their decision making is characterized by not admitting that they don't know what is going on. Knowing as a result of not knowing is anathema to them. They will spend a lifetime criticizing others before they will make an effort to help themselves. All of that and yet they can be very charismatic and engaging. Often they are good at managing the people around them and poor at managing themselves.

[Fishman]

Lets walk through your argument Mos
"I've got to ask, what is the draw of the peak oil meme to dittohead right-wingers?"
Well, you start out with name calling. This will never seems to come to mind from my left leaning friends, but MAYBE the right has something you can learn. I routinely learned valuable information from Heineken when he posted here, not politically but otherwise. Ludi gives me great viewpoints from gardening, as others.

"I know peakers CAN come from across the political spectrum, but it seems in the last year or so, the demographics of this board have shifted so much to the right that I feel like I'm reading a FoxNews talkback half of the time."
Here the problem for you Mos, peak oil is coming out clearer and clearer as reality. In that, some on the left were clearly correct. Unfortunately the left has no solutions. There will be no workers utopia you hoped for. People naturally become more conservative as times get tough. There is no money, a natural consequence of peak oil and financial collapse. But with no money the liberal dreams are dead, see the present state and federal situations.

"If the natural order of things is to bring back some 1950s utopia of happy motoring, then why would right-wingers decide to hang out in a place like this, in which most of us take for granted that TEOTWAWKI is gonna happen?"
Sorry, remember the 60s were the birth of modern liberalism. Both left and right will have to adapt to tougher times. More dependence on self and family are the bulwarks of conservatism. Liberalism depends on government and others providing ie "tax the rich". This liberal viewpoint doesn't work with a declining economy. It only works with an improving economic situation. That's why I've routinely stated that peak oil will be the demise of modern liberalism.

"It's one thing if these people didn't believe in peak oil. But they often write as if they are indeed worried about peak oil. And yet at the end of the day, they cling to their brown-tech vision of the world in which ANWR, OCS, oil-shale, tar-sands, and gunboat diplomacy will insure the non-neogotiable American way of life pretty much indefinitely."
Some conservatives do, many who post here do not. Unfortunately for the liberal, without you knowing it, you depended on these items also. Without them, YOU perish much quicker than the conservative

"That's assuming they even talk about peak oil, rather than starting a zillion open-topic threads pushing the usual right-wing agenda of bashing entitlements and playing apologist for the rich, corporate America, and praying to the church of Ayn Rand."
Hilarious, coming from the left.

"If there's one thing rabid right-winders are good at, it's out-typing their opponents on places like this or under the comments of any news story. If quantity was the only measure of winning an argument, the right-wingers win every time. That their arguments normally don't elevate themselves beyond ad hominem doesn't seem to matter. If you can just keep steamrolling on the keyboard, you'll eventually burn everybody out until you're the last one typing, and you can claim victory."
OR, they post much here because the quantity and the quality support the conservative viewpoint. Remember, you're smarter, you should have more and better arguments.

"So seriously, why bother? Peak oil is about change. Everybody's lives are going to change, and dittoheads don't seem to accept that. If they believe in peak oil enough, are fired up enough about the topic, to come here and brave the granola crunchers and the libertarians, then obviously there is something bothering them."
Nothing bothering me other than peak oil. Your post seem to indicate that only the left has the solutions to peak oil. It seems to me, the left is having a much harder time dealing with the reality and CONSEQUENCES of peak oil than the right. I've got really, really, really bad news for you Mos. This site will become overrun by the right, because they have the skills needed to adapt to peak oil, most on the left do not.

[americandream]

Fishman's post sums up quite succinctly, the void that constitutes his form of thinking. The problems of resourcing collapse speak of a failure at the very heart of the logic behind capital, continued expansion of it's inventory necessary for the growth of the surplus necessary for it's continued validation. The magnitude of this growth is of a calibre that no soomner is it compromised in any way will the very impulse of capital be stifled, it's logic questioned whereupon it must reinvent itself, invariably regressively as wealth seeks other forms of survival which will necessarily include zero cost human labour (slavery) and land (subject of course to its own loss as a consequence of it's own rapid degradation in the bid to preserve at least some of the return that characterised failed capital). Baldly brushing aside the inductive logic behind critiques of capital's terminal flaws speaks volumes for the failure to quite grasp the quandry we are all in and the ultimate and invisible hand of history that must COMPEL human adaptation subject to its dictates. The debate consequently is less one of what we would like rather what we must conform to, as has always been the case in human evolution.

[Fishman]

Thank you so much AmDream for showing me "the void that constitutes my form of thinking. I can even accept the challenges that capital places on our planet and ourselves. But for all your words, you offer no solution. We will not as humans "evolve" into some liberal utopia with the destruction that peak oil is, and will, result.
"The debate consequently is less one of what we would like rather what we must conform to, as has always been the case in human evolution." Exactly. And what we will conform to is decreasing resources whether it will be a capital based system or whatever you have failed to offer.

[americandream]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Fishman', 'T')hank you so much AmDream for showing me "the void that constitutes my form of thinking. I can even accept the challenges that capital places on our planet and ourselves. But for all your words, you offer no solution. We will not as humans "evolve" into some liberal utopia with the destruction that peak oil is, and will, result.
"The debate consequently is less one of what we would like rather what we must conform to, as has always been the case in human evolution." Exactly. And what we will conform to is decreasing resources whether it will be a capital based system or whatever you have failed to offer.

[pedalling_faster]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pedalling_faster', '
')
i was a lifelong Democrat - until Obama came along. now i'm an independent who believes in protecting the environment and giving a break to the working poor

[Ludi]

It's a dilemma for sure, but I'm not convinced abdicating is the best strategy. There's still a difference between the pile of garbage (Dems) and the shit sandwich (Reps). The fact that someone calls the healthcare bill "Obamacare" makes me think they really probably were not a "life-long Democrat" and are probably buying the Republican propaganda about the bill (such as "it forces you to buy health insurance" - a popular myth).

[Fishman]

AmDr, you debate the past, I didn't deny any of your issues with the past, though they are debatable. I agree with you accessment of the back breaking labor, and DISCIPLINE, an anathema to the left. See Mos's original post. It deals with the present situation of right wingers posting here. You run off to complain about capitalism. Stay on topic.

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Fishman', '
')back breaking labor, and DISCIPLINE, an anathema to the left.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Fishman', '
')back breaking labor, and DISCIPLINE, an anathema to the left.

[dinopello]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Fishman', '
')back breaking labor, and DISCIPLINE, an anathema to the left.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dinopello', '
')
Performing the back-breaking, dirty jobs that have to be done is admirable.

[Cog]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Fishman', '
')back breaking labor, and DISCIPLINE, an anathema to the left.

[vision-master]

Typical Rethug dominating aggressive behaviour.

Cog is a weak man.

[TITAN]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Fishman', '
')back breaking labor, and DISCIPLINE, an anathema to the left.

[DomusAlbion]

Let us all take a moment and reflect on what we are saying and how we're saying it.

And then tone it down.

I'll shut down this entire thread if these personal attacks continue.