An Introduction: Welcome Crooks & Liars Readers
Posted: September 7, 2012 Filed under: Personal, Politics | Tags: #OccupyWallStreet, anarcho-capitalism, Burt Worm, Crooks & Liars, Democratic Underground, John Perr, justice, Libertarianism, Ron Paul, Tragic Farce, zombie Leave a comment »Thanks to John Perr over at Crooks & Liars for rounding my last post up along with Nevada Progressive, Kevin Drum and The Political Carnival. I’m flattered and honored to be included in such distinguished company.
Some of you may have encountered me before over at Democratic Underground, where I went by the handle Burt Worm. For the rest of you, I’ve been keeping this blog for a little over a year, sometimes with more attentiveness than others. If you look at the word cloud down the right margin a ways, you’ll get an idea of my interests. As of today, #OccupyWallStreet is still my most covered topic (tangentially, usually, these days anyway). But I also obsess over Ron Paul, libertarianism and “anarcho”-capitalism because the ideas at the heart of their philosophies, which I tend to argue with, I think are essential for understanding what’s going on in the US and the world today. I’ve also been a bit obsessed with justice lately. And I won’t even mention my dabbling in theories about the face-eating Miami “zombie.”
I hope you’ll have a little look around the joint, and if you like what you see, you’ll come back and engage with me here. Otherwise, maybe I’ll be seeing you on Twitter.
Fractured Democrats, Part 3: The Economics of DemocraticUnderground
Posted: December 14, 2011 Filed under: Democracy, Economics, Politics | Tags: Burt Worm, democratic leadership council, Democratic Underground, Democrats, Freedom, netroots 1 Comment »Since I began this series, Democraticunderground.com has undergone a major change, dropping its 2.0 version–which was launched in July 2003, two and a half years after the initial launch of the site and just three months after I became active in the community–and unveiling its 3.0 version. It’s difficult for an outsider to get a bead on why this change was deemed necessary. One plausible-enough scenario I saw some long-time DUers posit is that the software the old site was built on (DCForum+ Version 1.1) is no longer supported by the the original developers who stopped making it in 2002, so all of its fixes for bugs (and there were many) had to be jury-rigged by the site’s administrators. But many DUers, both banned and active, think the software issues are an excuse for the real reason for the change, which is to stifle dissent from DU’s inherently center-right, pro-Obama, pro-Democratic Leadership Council bias.
More than a few believe greed may be a factor, as well.
DemocraticUnderground and the Fracturing of the Democratic Grass Roots, Part I
Posted: December 2, 2011 Filed under: Democracy, Election 2012, Politics | Tags: #OccupyWallStreet, Barack Obama, Burt Worm, Democratic Underground, Democrats, Free Republic, George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, Howard Dean, John Kerry 6 Comments »
A couple of days ago, I accidentally stumbled upon a fascinating American subculture I was not well aquainted with: the prickly, stranger-shy cluster of rightist (though many self-identify as “liberal”) Hillary Clinton voters who were so enraged by the alleged (not to imply falsely alleged) chicanery between Team Obama and the DNC during the 2008 Democratic primaries that they picked up stakes and headed for any hill they felt sure Obama or the Democrats hadn’t defiled with their presence.
In my ramblings on the internet over the last few years, I have encountered many a Clinton supporter of the left who was driven to internet purgatories where other disaffected or disaffiliated Democrats gathered to share solace and critiques of Obama’s America with lefties (Greens, Naderites, Marxists) who had given up on the Democrats as the best hope for progressives long, long ago. Indeed, I’ve lately felt much more comfortable with the left-wing victims of Obama’s serial betrayals than with Obama supporters, one of which I nominally was in 2008. But this was my first encounter with the radicalized centrists and center-rightists in the Clinton contingent who felt the sting of the Party’s betrayal.
Let me tell you: radical centrism is a trip! I’m sure my new friends in this subculture would find such an amused anthropological assessment of them annoying. To them I can only say, I’m sorry. I can’t help it. You’d be laughing at yourselves too if you could only see yourselves through my eyes. But I’m going to try to set aside my amusement with them, which owes mainly to their strangely and almost uniformly vicious defenses against anyone not in their club–e.g., me, in my clumsy attempts to learn more about them–and try to focus on my observations about what this group tells us–tells me, anyway–about the Democrats’ prospects in 2012 and beyond. My main interest is in how the party’s recent past and future connect with the rise of #OccupyWallStreet. My hypothesis: The story of grass roots Democrats in the 21st century is one of numerous parallel threads of ordinary Americans’ political desires being thwarted by indifferent or even hostile political institutions, and this may be the beginnings of a new American Revolution. Read the rest of this entry »
9/11 Flashback: No Excuses
Posted: September 7, 2011 Filed under: Politics | Tags: 9/11, Burt Worm, Democratic Underground, George W. Bush, New York City, New York Times, R.W. Apple, Rudolph Giuliani 1 Comment »I wrote this in response to an analysis of George W. Bush’s actions in the wake of 9/11 by R.W. Apple of the New York Times. It was published on Democratic Underground just a week and a day after the event that supposedly changed everything. As far as I was concerned it did nothing to change my perception that the man in the White House was illegitimate. I believe that the deterioration of the American ethos that we’ve seen since that day is due largely to that central fact, which the media continue to prefer to sweep under the rug.
No Excuses
September 19, 2001
by Burt Worm
R.W. Apple and the New York Times are at it again: trying to bestow legitimacy on a president whom many people in the United States and around the world sincerely – and reasonably – believe was not legitimately elected. Read the rest of this entry »
My 9/11: Afternoon
Posted: September 7, 2011 Filed under: Politics, Personal | Tags: Terrorism, New York City, 9/11, Rudolph Giuliani, Burt Worm, George W. Bush, George Pataki Leave a comment »Continuing from yesterday’s posts. Rather than dig up faulty memories, I’ve decided to quote myself (writing as Burt Worm) from 2003:
The city felt like Berlin 1945
I felt like I was in a Graham Greene novel, especially when I was waiting [on the Queens side], with hundreds of tired, worried people, to be allowed to cross the 59th Street Bridge. No one was crossing any bridges at all, by car, train, bicycle or foot, and I wasn’t sure I was even going to be allowed into Manhattan. Read the rest of this entry »
9/11: The Persistence of Memory
Posted: September 6, 2011 Filed under: Personal, Politics | Tags: 9/11, Burt Worm, New York City, Persistence of Memory, Salvador Dali, Scientific American, Terrorism 1 Comment »Dali had the right idea about memory:
After writing my post on the morning of 9/11, I read this article at Scientific American: Read the rest of this entry »
