Oh, real mature, bringing my age into it. You're only jealous cause I keep ripping your argument apart.

Once again, for good measure: Name ONE time tw has ever said that communism is a good thing.


EDIT: and keep in mind that I did live in a communist country for three years.

So is UG, Joe McCarthy's reincarnate or long lost son? :lol:

No. Dude works as a line-repairman for Qwest in Portland, OR.

UG is either pulling chains just because he can or he's finally gotten that Master's in Douchebaggery (his primary field of study is Moral Rectitude with a focus on Rectal Moritude)

Speaking of remarkable degrees of maturity...

Happy Monkey, you are wrong about that having nothing to do with Communism, though you could get right were you to start reading some history of the Soviets' actions -- for those were exactly the things they tried. Try looking in your public library. Please keep in mind that unlike you, I have some experience of this stuff. I know you don't because you'd sound more like me if you did.

Ibram's age has this relevance: he's post-Cold War, and hasn't done a lot of international-relations and history study for that period -- not having had time, nor apparently interest. Nothing necessarily wrong with that, but it means he doesn't yet have an informed opinion. This is why he might believe he can rip my argument apart, but has not done so.

No. They are completely orthogonal to Communism.

You keep saying this, and we keep asking, but you never answer: WHAT TOTALITARIAN REGIME do you claim to have lived under?

I'm guessing he's referring to the army.

Where do those of us who weren't around in Communism's terrible reign of unimaginable cruelty go to find information which will identify tw as the "hammer & sickle painted on his barn" commie you imply he is? Somehow all my schooling thus far has glossed over this crucial information.

Once again, you prove yourself to be a prejudicial, presumptuous idiot. I actually know more about WWII-Cold War than about any other period in history, except what I've been alive in. I know all about communists and what they did and how they did it. I also know that doing things and saying things and believing things that resemble what the communists did and said and believed does not make you a communist any more than breathing (which the communists did) or eating (which the lucky commmunists did) or sleeping (which the communists did). You are a communist if you believe in communism and believe that a communist government is the right way to go.

I guess you missed it when I did answer (and I must say I can't recall you asking): this was my military service in the United States Navy. Militaries are totalitarian societies, or subcultures if you will. That you have the option to quit at the end of your enlistment doesn't reduce the totalitarian nature of the organization; it's a safety valve or perhaps an emergency exit.

I have not claimed, nor shall I ever, to have been a Romanian exile or something. Being in an armed service is a sufficient lessoning in totalitarianism for any reasonable person.

Then you should have recognized tw as a communist before I did, if you know so much about it. Kid, you're not proving your expertise by me, not so far. Show me knowledge, not rose fertilizer or bluster, okay?

As for the rest of your para, I'd call that drawing a distinction without a difference. If it quacks like a communist duck... Orwell had a word for that: duckspeak.

That's all you've got. The only thing you've raised about tw is that he doesn't like some aspects of US foreign policy. That has nothing to do with communism.

Jeb, you could do what I did and read the guy's posts. Note the anti-Americanism (and not much of a hop to anti-democracy as well), the whole "America's cause deserved to lose in Vietnam" spin, and the perennial undermining of American motivation to win out against anti-democracy enemies. Note that his political ire is reserved for the most firmly anticommunist of the major political parties: the Soviets and Chicoms learned decades ago that they can deal more profitably with the Democrats than the Republicans (and my, how often they profited). All this humbug is exactly what the Sovs pushed on the world for decades. This is where tw's thinking is stuck, and he won't or can't evolve to enlightenment. Thinking as he does, tw cannot be a real democrat. He can run a fraud, and he can try and pull the wool over your eyes. Unlike me, he has no will to win out against the antihuman forces of anti-democracy. Considering how much genocide the antidemocracies have stacked up, one wonders at his rationales, and one imagines the very worst of his motivations.

Monkey, I understand communism better than you do. If you understood it as I do, you'd sound a lot more like me.