Originally Posted by alt_historian
OK, up to this point you're saying McCain is generally in the middle of the Republican Party spectrum (if I understand US politics correctly), and in fact trends to the left in some ways.
Exactly. McCain the Moderate is a media myth. He is "moderate" or "liberal" on a select few issues such as abortion or the environment, but when you ignore his stance on global warming, illegal immigration, and an assortment of wedge issues (phony issues that exploit the religious interests of segments of the population), then you realize what a hard right authoritarian McCain is.
On social and cultural issues he may be "moderately conservative" he is somewhat to the "left" of a few Democrats on some environmental issues (being one of the few Republicans in favor of initiatives to curb greenhouse gas emissions) and he is in favor of amnesty for illegal immigration. On economic issues, McCain is by no means a fiscal conservative in the Old Right sense, but then again, very few Republicans are fiscal conservatives in the older sense. McCain, like the rest of his party, is just as Keynesian as the Democrats, albeit in a different way. Democrats can be called "left-Keynesians" as they are in favor of the welfare state (even though most Democrats nowadays are really not that far left), while the present day Republican Party can be called right-Keynesian. The neoconservative GOP is largely corporatist.
By the standards of the New Right, John McCain is slightly to the right of his party. The only true fiscal conservative to run for presidency in 2008 was Ron Paul. But McCain is no liberal or moderate on economics. He is a corporatist whose first loyalties lie with the military-industrial complex. His opposition to the Bush tax cuts was not for left-liberal reasons but because cutting taxes is not feasible in time of war.
Originally Posted by alt_historian
How the fuck does that square with what you stated just then? In the immediately preceding sentence? Remember you were stating that as your own opinion, not as public opinion.
No, I reject the media opinion that McCain is some sort of moderate or worse still "independent" though I conceded that he is more moderate or liberal than his party on a
select few issues, many of which are
completely irrelevant in practice. All in all, John McCain is a power-hungry authoritarian, and a hard right (notice I did not say "far right") one at that. I stand by my statement that he is fascistic (though certainly no Hitler or Mussolini). Despite his stance on illegal immigration or global warming, or even his bipartisanship, John McCain is an unapologetic war mongerer. You will not find a more neoconservative candidate than him. (Also, one need not be far right on economics to be fascist. In fact very few fascists were economic right-wingers except for Pinochet. Hitler and Mussolini were Keynesian corporatists.)
Originally Posted by alt_historian
Right... so you think he'd be pretty awful, then? Much worse than Bush, right?
John McCain, 2008 edition? Yes. If he is elected his term would be WORSE than Bush. I would expect McCain to start World War Three. I am not sure about the 2000 edition, the eight years saner, eight years more competent, eight years less senile McCain back when he ran against Bush for the GOP nomination.
One thing is for sure, John McCain is stupider than Bush. I think that George W. Bush is in actuality extremely intelligent, possibly genius (or perhaps more likely, sub-genius) but he is also very cunning. I think that George W acts stupid to throw people off, so people think that he is an idiot when in fact he is a devious mastermind. Bush was an average student at an Ivy League school (whose less-than-good grades were more a result of partying than stupidity). McCain graduated at the bottom of his class in the military academy.
Originally Posted by alt_historian
FFS, man. Make up your mind before you start writing.
Touche! Good point, I should have come to a conclusion faster. I said that I was not sure if McCain (2000 ed.) would have been better or worse than Bush if nominated in '00. Would a McCain 2000-2004 candidacy have been more or less disasterous than Bush? (Of course this would assume he could even beat Al Gore.) I do not doubt that he would be WAY WORSE than Bush if elected in 2008. But now that I think about it, John McCain would probably have been worse then as well. What impact did George W. Bush and his cronyism coupled with robber baron capitalism (corporatism as opposed to free market enterprise) have on the economy? How did his deficit spending affect the debt, the value of currency, etc.? Now remember that GWB had an MBA. McCain admit that he doesn't know shit about economics.
But I guess one of the central issues is the Iraq War. If Bush decided not to start a war/intervention in Iraq, surely his candidacy would not have been seen as disasterous by many, and he probably would not rank as high among the truly bad presidents. Would John McCain have gone to Iraq? IOTL, he was a big time cheerleader for the war, but some think we probably would not have been in Iraq.
Originally Posted by Ibn Warraq
You have done two things. First, you have shown that you haven't the slightest idea what a fascist is. Second, you have insulted everyone who actually had to live under a fascist dictatorship. Please go read a book so you have some understanding of what fascism is before posting on this subject again.
John McCain is a hard-right authoritarian and a corporatist. Fascism is an authoritarian ideology and is usually coupled with corporatism. Other tenets of fascism include militarism and imperialism. As such, McCain meets many of the tenets of fascism at least minimally. McCain might not be a Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, Francisco Franco, Hirohito, Ioannis Metaxas, Diem, Pol Pot, Augosto Pinochet, Idi Amin, or Saddam Hussein. I do consider him in the same league as some lesser authoritarian dictators such as Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Shah Reza Pahlavi, Pilsudski, Peron, and Syngam Rhee.
For instance, many people associate fascism with racism. While such dictators as Mussolini, Metaxas, Hitler, and Hirohito were all virulently racist, fascism was not necessarily always racist in nature. I do not think that John McCain is racist, though I would not be surprised if he was at least a little racist (he does admire that "progressive racist" Theodore Roosevelt but that may not mean McCain shares TR's belief in white man's burden), but I do not know enough so I will give him the benefit of the doubt.
I would argue that the "War Against Terror" is an effectively racist effort even if the neocons who advocate the war do not advocate racism. Like all wars against nouns: War on War (American entry into WW1, the "War to end all Wars"), War on Booze (Prohibition), War on Drugs, Culture War etc. that reactionaries and sometimes leftists (War on Poverty) advance, the War on Terror can be expected to fail. Such "wars" whether in the form of a literal war or a kulturkampf will fail. I think that
The
War
Against
Terror falls into that category.
But how is T.W.A.T. racist? First off, what does this campaign entail? Everybody knows that the War on Terrorism is not about terrorism per se, rather it is about fighting Islamist terrorism. This anti-terror campaign is ostensibly about combating Islamic extremism, but if that is the case then it is doomed to failure. That is because Islamic fundamentalism can never be stopped by force of arms. As such, the only possible outcomes for this "war" are failure, extermination, or perpetual war.
If the goal is to "win" (and finish) T.W.A.T. then it becomes a war of extermination. If the goal is to simply fight and refuse defeat then it becomes a perpetual war. I am not saying that Islamic extremism is immortal, only that it can not be eradicated through military activity. But how should T.W.A.T. be fought? Defining terrorism and terrorist acts is difficult enough with secular terrorists. In this great campaign against Islamic fundies, how do we know who the terrorists are? Offensive campaings against terrorism are extremely difficult to accomplish. And in the process there will be many civilian casualties. Many men resort to terrorism purely out of revenge, even if they were not believers in the cause. Some have had family killed, whether or not the victims deserved it, and resorted to retaliation. It happens to Israel and may happen to the US. We could certainly fight limited antiterrorism campaigns to bring those responsible for specific acts to justice. We could maybe even capture and kill leaders of terrorist groups. But to think that anyone could stop an ideology like that once and for all is insanely idiotic.
So do you cut the heads off the hydra or burn it from the ground? Aimless campaigns against "the terrorists" without knowing friend from foe will create more terrorists. Western interventionism was one of the root causes of reactionary Islamic activity. To think that Western interventionism could solve the problem it created in the first place is nonsensical. Eventually such tactics will create more and more terrorists. The only way to stop it is to either kill off every last member of the group whether innocent or not, or else to decimate entire populations leaving too few survivors to carry out attacks, and leaving them defeated enough that they might finally give up. Hence why I think that T.W.A.T. is not only unwinnable, but almost genocidal. The neocons and their useful idiots who believe that Iraq is a battlefront in "The War Against Terrorism" have no idea what they are getting into.
John McCain refuses to accept defeat even in an unwinnable war. So how does he define a win? Would he finish the job or just fight forever and call it a win because he never forfeit? The only options this would leave him are perpetual war or a genocidal war to exterminate or decimate much of the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia. Any one who would chose the latter option is little better than the Nazis, and thus seems pretty fascist to me. Whereas advocates of "perpetual war for perpetual peace" seem fascistic in a different sense, more like Big Brother from
1984. I trust that McCain is not that genocidal and that he prefers the former option (never ending war) as indicated by his 100 years in Iraq comment.
Even Bush admit that such a war on terrorism is unwinnable, yet he refuses to forfeit or admit failure. Like Bush, I think that McCain favors perpetual war. It is said that warfare is the health of the state. Perpetual warfare is thus valuable to certain individuals who want to gain power and keep it. For such people and groups, world peace is not only unattainable, but undesireable. Now that the Cold War is over, the neocons must find more war to keep the proles in line.
So when I call McCain fascist, I am
NOT likening him to
Hitler. I am equating John McCain to Big Brother from the George Orwell novel. Note also that while Bush is an ardent statist and quite authoritarian, I do not think that GWB is a fascist.