THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

BASICS: THE CAMPAIGN IS THE SCREWUPS | nationalsalvation.net

Back in the 60s I noted a change in the nature of politicians. No one else understood what I was talking about, as usual.

I put it this way: If a Strom Thurmond or even a Hubert Humphrey were lost for two weeks on a trip and gave a press conference, they would hold a press conference at which they would speak off the top of their heads.

If a New Type politician were lost for two weeks, a Lott or a Dukakis, he would not hold the press conference until he had read over the newspapers and seen the latest polls.

On talk shows, media people always say, "The question is whether he will screw up during the campaign."

These same media types then bitch about how both sides are so negative. They wonder why the public is not interested in a candidate's program but only on the dirt.

They just SAID that the campaign IS the dirt. The campaign IS the screwups.

If you want to make a LIVING as a reporter, you send your editor what he wants to PRINT. When he hands out a paper droning on abut some policy initiative, you are thinking about how to use the question time to get him to screw up, to say something Jesse Jackson or NOW can declare is Evil.

"Professional" has only one meaning: You get PAID.

For a "professional journalist" a campaign is the screwups, not policy.

The changeover from the Ole Stroms to the new Lotts came largely because of the simple fact that campaigns meant less and less each time. People elected Strom or Humphrey because they MATTERED, and when Ole Strom or the Ecstatic Frog said something stupid it was just entertaining.

Strom was fighting integration and Humphrey was putting civil rights platforms into the Democratic Platform. Harry Byrd was fighting every expenditure and liberals were pushing whole new areas of taxation. Nobody was going to give up those critical matters over a silly remark.

Today in terms of real policy the only difference between Obama and Clinton is, IN FACT, the color of the skin. Every dime that can REALLY be spent is being spent, every tax that can in real politics be taxed is BEING taxed.

"Civil rights" and every other critical non-fiscal issue is decided it the courts, not in the White House or in Congress. All that is LEFT to vote on is looks. All that is LEFT to report on is verbal screwups.

WE DON'T OWE THE IRAQIS OR THE ISRAELIS A DAMNED THING | 2002-09-21

First we hear the Administration arguing that we need to go into Iraq because Saddam Hussein is developing weapons of mass destruction.

But, after an impassioned talk about the immediate danger of the mass murder of Americans by Saddam, we then get a lecture about what we owe Iraq. After invading Iraq to remove the clear and present danger Saddam Hussein poses, our troops have to stay there until we give Iraq a stable democracy.

Nobody asks what one has to do with the other. Why do we owe Iraq a democracy in return for their threatening to murder us? As always, you will only see that question asked here.

"The road to peace in the Middle East peace lies through Baghdad." When I heard that said, my ears pricked up. "Middle East peace," when the media or respectable conservatives use the term, always means peace for Israel.

I do not want American troops dying for Israel. I do not want American troops staying in Iraq to make the world safe for Israel.

I brought up the danger of mass terrorism long before anybody else was concerned about it. See November 21, 1998 - SUPERTERRORISM, repeated September 11, 2001. But I am also very, very watchful about anybody using terrorism as an excuse to get Israeli lobby support.

If the objective is to destroy the Iraqi threat of weapons of mass destruction, that is one argument for invasion that has a clear objective. But the second they start talking about "our responsibility in Iraq," I say forget it. The only reason Bush says we have for a military interest in Iraq is because they are a threat to our lives.

Everybody but me seems to agree that, because they threatened our lives, we owe the Iraqis a stable government and a democracy.

It should be a warning to you that this is the only place you will find any objection to that nonsense.

DAVE | 2008-12-06

I cannot afford to be a practitioner of philosophy simply because I have too many people I must deal with. That forces me into a very pragmatic state of mind and into a sober assessment of my own capabilities.

I am one those people who is often up in the middle of night resolving pressing issues that MUST be resolved quickly because I have no choice but to resolve them quickly. And resolving them successfully is not an elective, it is a requirement because the consequences of my failure are very onerous not only for myself but for many others also. And it is the counting of those many others that wears upon me.

In that there is arithmetic of real power. That is why I know that stating a goal is not a strategy. In fact, in my work, I have learned not to state goals, but rather to shape the cadences of how things really get done and accomplished, which in my own experience usually resolves itself into the skillful selection and use of tools in a social context (which another way of saying a context of salesmanship).

There is no distinction between a capability and a strategy. The two are the same thing. To the extent that religion and ideology support the acquisition of a capability, is the extent to which religion and ideology are justified. But these must not be permitted to slide into the role of furnishing consolation.

That is the lesson the Stormfronters don't understand.

The value of BUGs is that it is a means of learning a sound way of thinking. Sound ways of thinking lead directly to the acquisition of capabilities, a panoply of understandings in the form of words and phrases that furnish of foundation for the reuniting of white people and making that reuniting real.

Robert Whitaker is the "king of the hill" in this. No one else is really doing it, which is what makes his work so very important.