Cmde. Slavyanski pwns Revlefters.

Cmde. Slavyanski wrote:
From time to time I have to take a break from RevLeft due to the overwhelming rhetoric is Trotskidiots, liberals, and the Anarchists. It's not that their arguments aren't easily refutable, but there is something deeply disturbing about people who are supposedly anti-capitalist, and yet when the discussion turns to real, existing socialism they are suddenly indistinguishable from the most vociferous anti-communists. When these people are confronted by pro-capitalist arguments on any other issue, they resist. When confronted by those whom they call "Stalinists", also known as anyone who actually defends real-world socialism, they are suddenly accepting of any anti-Communist claim ever written. When confronted with actual evidence from archival sources, as well as that which was never secret to begin with, they squirm and worm their way around the argument, presenting still all those magical alternatives that didn't really exist back then.

Since I am from the West, and yet live in Eastern Europe, I have developed some theories about what makes people embrace Trotskidiocy and Anarchism. Given that we are all essentially "converts" since we are all usually raised under American or Western anti-Communism, making the step towards any radical left ideology that presents and alternative to capitalism is a bit of a leap. What makes certain people gravitate towards Trotsky, Anarchism, Third Positionism, or any kind of revisionism, is simply moral cowardice. They are too afraid to break outside of the bourgeoisie's framework when it comes to discussing real world socialism. They are too afraid to do some damn research and challenge anti-Communist claims, they are too afraid to analyze the reality of property relations in socialist countries and consider that some countries were truly socialist at one time while others weren't, and most of all, they are far too terrified to offer a coherent explanation about the failure of revisionism in 1991.

So how do Trotskidiots explain it all? One word- Stalinism. Yes folks, EVERY socialist nation that existed from 1924 on was actually 'Stalinist', regardless of the reality of their economic systems, their relations with Stalin and the Soviet Union, massive changes in opposition to the economic system which existed under Stalin, and so on. The post 1956 Soviet Union was still 'Stalinist', Gorbachev was still 'Stalinist', China was 'Stalinist', Czechoslovakia was 'Stalinist', Poland was 'Stalinist', Yugoslavia was 'Stalinist'. Yes, according to the Trotskidiot Marxism is just fine and dandy, as interpreted by a guy who spent most of his life opposing the Bolsheviks, but somehow every nominally Marxist or Marxist-inspired revolution around the world was actually Stalinist and therefore anti-Marxist, even long after Stalin's death and his denunciation by Khruschev. The whole idea is to try to avoid fighting for socialism's real record by pretending it was never really tried, thus preserving Marxism's virginity.

This is the kind of shit that might fly on some university campus I'd imagine. But try telling 9-to-5 workers somewhere that you got this wonderful system, but all the revolutions of the 20th century which were supposedly based on that system in fact had nothing to do with it. That's exactly what every hard worker with his or her personal problems and trials needs to hear. Most people, would be willing to listen to cold, hard facts. I've worked in a sand and gravel mine basically shoveling sand all day and getting covered in a mixture of dust, sand, and axle grease. I could definitely understand that in light of other issues, sometimes you have to appreciate what changes you can actually get. I could appreciate that when you try to make changes in favor of the working class, the old ruling class is not going to leave you alone, and you are going to have to fight. I was educated enough at the time to know that Russian politics and society of that era were by no means 'civil' by modern standards. Yet if someone were to tell me that Marxism as they preached it would emancipate me, but all those revolutions and states had nothing to do with Marxism, I'd be gone in a heartbeat. One of the reasons why I resisted Marxism for so many years was because of nonsense like this. And that is ignoring all the insane contradictions in Trotsky's theories.

Then of course there are the Anarchists. These geniuses have a 100% failure rate when it comes to constructing a society, but rest assured their society would be far better than anything else out there, including Communism! Just pay no attention to the fact that the only time they have been able to maintain some sense of society came in the context of two major wars. They never smashed any states, someone else did that for them. The common argument I get is "it's not fair to point out our failure, we were crushed by overwhelming military power!" Well until your ideology can initiate a revolution on its own for a change, and sustain the inevitable counter-revolution, that's too damn bad. The Red Army withstood the military might not only of the Whites but of the many interventionalist forces, then withstood one of the largest military invasions in history by Europe's greatest military power and her allies in WWII. Anarchists continually put ideals above reality, get their asses kicked, and then think they should get a free pass to criticize Communist states because they failed to reach their end goal, ignoring all the massive achievements they gained while accepting any anti-Communist claim uncritically at the drop of a hat, so long as it serves their purposes. On one occasion, Anarchists in Spain had been forewarned that the Fascists were approaching their city. Always the idealists, the Anarchists refused to build fortifications and dig trenches based on the idea that this showed cowardice. And these people criticize Stalin. You won't see them siding with Thomas Friedman or David Horowitz if the subject were globalization or US military intervention, but you can be damn sure they'll accept anything the latter two might have to say about the Soviet Union.

As one HU member pointed out, and I am paraphrasing here- the idea is that since these peoples' ideology has never really existed in the real world for any significant amount of time, they are basically blameless. They can criticize existing socialism all they want. What they fail to realize about their all-or-nothing ideologies, be they Anarchism or Trotskidiocy, is that when you uncritically accept the bourgeois narrative of socialist history, and when you suggest that either your impossible-to-achieve society or capitalism with perhaps reforms is the only choice, you are effectively defending capitalism. Yes Trot, you are defending capitalism. Yes Anarchist, you are defending capitalism no matter how many streets you dance in or trash cans you set on fire. Yes, we know you don't positively advocate capitalism, you are selling your own ideology. But because that ideology has been a proven failure that has never got off the ground anywhere, you are thus leading people towards failure and away from the only force that has shown it can oppose capitalism- Marxism-Leninism. Is it not telling that Anarchism or Trotskyism have been such failures, while Marxism-Leninism created dozens of socialist societies, which lasted even when the Marxist-Leninist concepts were discarded and actively sabotaged?

And this gets to the crux of the matter. I am not one to defend revisionism of the East Bloc or post-1956 Soviet Union, nor Cuba, China, etc. But no matter what I have to say about any of these states, I can at least accomplish what good they did when they were following a more or less Marxist path. Why do I have the ability to do this? Perhaps because I never was exposed to campus Communism and instead was working at various jobs starting at 14. Perhaps it was because I live in Eastern Europe and I can acknowledge, in agreement with many here who lived through the time, that even in the revisionist Soviet Union or Eastern Europe, there were advantages for working people. Perhaps it is because of my study of women trafficking, an industry that got a huge shot in the arm since the fall of revisionism. I still remember well the story of a girl in Viktor Malarek's book The Natashas, who was forced into the business while underage, and may have been raped as many as 1200 times. I remember how she begged her clients, NATO military personnel, to help her, and they either ignored it or even told her pimp with devastating consequences. Can you imagine why it might make my blood boil to hear someone tell me how terrible it was to live in the Soviet Union when they never even visited Eastern Europe at all?

The fact is that under Marxism-Leninism, and even under revisionism, these horrors were not happening. Even if we accepted without criticism all the disproven lies of anti-Communists about the so-called "crimes" of Communism, we ought to be able to look at the history of socialism since those alleged crimes, compare them to the far greater crimes that occurred in creating the capitalist industrialist powers, and suggest that perhaps this was necessary. Not so with the anarchist and Trots, more often than not young, in college, and living in privileged nations. All or nothing it is for them. And on the part of the anarchists, they have not a leg to stand on to declare, with the same glee as a neo-conservative, that Marxism 'failed'. The comparison is pretty simple; the Wright Brothers' plane, in comparison to subsequent advances in aviation, failed for all intents and purposes. By stark contrast, it was leagues ahead of all the ridiculous flying machine contraptions that preceded it. Remember those old films depicting guys riding bicycles off of cliffs with wings attached? That's anarchism. When there's a good wind, like a revolution started by Bolsheviks in 1917, or a state crisis such as the military uprising in Spain in 1936, they might get some distance, but they always land flat on their face.

The fact is that Marxism-Leninism accomplished something. It created nations, it liberated nations from colonial prisons, in eliminated illiteracy, it fought Islamic and Christian fundamentalism, it modernized agriculture and industrialized some of the most backward nations on earth, it defeated Fascism at its apogee, it kept US imperialism at bay, it reconciled ethnic tensions, it brought universal health-care, women's rights, ended child labor, suppressed and even eliminated prostitution; all these things during the time it existed, to varying degrees. And yet when we listen to the list of anarchist and Trotskyist accomplishments, we are treated to the symphony of crickets. And yet these folks still insist that their idea is somehow superior, in spite of all evidence to the contrary. Even when they lose, they win, according to their debate tactics. It's easy to criticize existing systems when yours has never been in the driver's seat.

Lastly, for the sake of argument, let me point out that just because an argument or claim comes from the ruling class' intellectuals, this does not necessarily mean that it must be false. Indeed many false claims of the anti-Communists actually originate either from Trotsky or Khruschev. But it one ought to expect that anyone who is supposedly an anti-Communist ought to be a little more critical, seeing that it's not as if anti-Communists don't have a slough of arguments ready to attack anyone who claims to be anti-capitalist. You can't fight them tooth and nail one minute, and accept every word they say the next just because it suits you politically. More than this, the anti-Communist narrative of 'Communist crimes' is in fact largely a matter of fallacious perspective, once you break down their telephone number death-tolls with factual evidence. Much of what is left entails considering those things which are or have been commonplace under capitalism to be intentional, 'crimes' when they occur under any socialist regime. And if you can make that leap, what right does an anarchist have to defend the very real atrocities committed in Spain by anarchists, which were often opposed by the Communists? What right has an anarchist to criticize the Soviet Union under Stalin, going along with the anti-Communist narrative that casts so many political prisoners as automatically innocent, while insisting that those killed by anarchists in Spain must have been true Fascist sympathizers? A logical person can conclude that perhaps a great many of those killed were fifth-columnists, but one must also apply that logic to the USSR as well, in light of the archival studies that have been done regarding the purges and GULAG system.

In conclusion, there is a serious problem when one can find themselves in a debate with self-proclaimed anti-capitalists, whose arguments seem no different than that of anti-Communists and in some cases even Fascists. One of the last arguments I was in focused on rape in Eastern Europe in 1944-45. I was surprised to find the anarchists and Trots to be arguing this case using the same tactics so common amongst Neo-Nazis. Who could possibly suggest that this occurrence was somehow related to 'Stalinism'? What it all goes to show is that Trotskidiocy and anarchism are de facto pro-capitalist, and in the past have been de facto pro-Fascist from time to time. If you propagate propaganda which aids capitalists and Fascists, while not presenting any viable alternative to capitalism, and while attacking Marxist-Leninists who have proven accomplishments in this respect, you are indirectly aiding the ruling class. Perhaps in the 30's, they had an excuse, but decades later with the benefit of hindsight there are no excuses left. Marxism got somewhere, Anarchism and Trotskidiocy never made it off the tarmac. Ergo Marxism-Leninism is the correct line against capitalism, and victory is a matter of correcting those mistakes which were made in its application, as opposed to these other ideologies which were based on shaky foundations and mistakes from the beginning. And finally, just for the benefit of the doubt, I try to remind these people that even if somehow Anarchism or Trotskyism could ever be successful in the future, it would never have achieved one inch of progress had it not been based on an honest, materialistic analysis of existing socialism, and as such Marxism-Leninism and real-world socialism would inevitably be linked to the foundation of that future hypothetical society. Of course I'm not going to hold my breath.

Rant over.

slavicsocialist wrote:(I'm not sure where to start this thread so if this is the wrong place feel free to move it)

Cmde. Slavyanski wrote:
From time to time I have to take a break from RevLeft due to the overwhelming rhetoric is Trotskidiots, liberals, and the Anarchists. It's not that their arguments aren't easily refutable, but there is something deeply disturbing about people who are supposedly anti-capitalist, and yet when the discussion turns to real, existing socialism they are suddenly indistinguishable from the most vociferous anti-communists. When these people are confronted by pro-capitalist arguments on any other issue, they resist. When confronted by those whom they call "Stalinists", also known as anyone who actually defends real-world socialism, they are suddenly accepting of any anti-Communist claim ever written. When confronted with actual evidence from archival sources, as well as that which was never secret to begin with, they squirm and worm their way around the argument, presenting still all those magical alternatives that didn't really exist back then.

Since I am from the West, and yet live in Eastern Europe, I have developed some theories about what makes people embrace Trotskidiocy and Anarchism. Given that we are all essentially "converts" since we are all usually raised under American or Western anti-Communism, making the step towards any radical left ideology that presents and alternative to capitalism is a bit of a leap. What makes certain people gravitate towards Trotsky, Anarchism, Third Positionism, or any kind of revisionism, is simply moral cowardice. They are too afraid to break outside of the bourgeoisie's framework when it comes to discussing real world socialism. They are too afraid to do some damn research and challenge anti-Communist claims, they are too afraid to analyze the reality of property relations in socialist countries and consider that some countries were truly socialist at one time while others weren't, and most of all, they are far too terrified to offer a coherent explanation about the failure of revisionism in 1991.

So how do Trotskidiots explain it all? One word- Stalinism. Yes folks, EVERY socialist nation that existed from 1924 on was actually 'Stalinist', regardless of the reality of their economic systems, their relations with Stalin and the Soviet Union, massive changes in opposition to the economic system which existed under Stalin, and so on. The post 1956 Soviet Union was still 'Stalinist', Gorbachev was still 'Stalinist', China was 'Stalinist', Czechoslovakia was 'Stalinist', Poland was 'Stalinist', Yugoslavia was 'Stalinist'. Yes, according to the Trotskidiot Marxism is just fine and dandy, as interpreted by a guy who spent most of his life opposing the Bolsheviks, but somehow every nominally Marxist or Marxist-inspired revolution around the world was actually Stalinist and therefore anti-Marxist, even long after Stalin's death and his denunciation by Khruschev. The whole idea is to try to avoid fighting for socialism's real record by pretending it was never really tried, thus preserving Marxism's virginity.

This is the kind of shit that might fly on some university campus I'd imagine. But try telling 9-to-5 workers somewhere that you got this wonderful system, but all the revolutions of the 20th century which were supposedly based on that system in fact had nothing to do with it. That's exactly what every hard worker with his or her personal problems and trials needs to hear. Most people, would be willing to listen to cold, hard facts. I've worked in a sand and gravel mine basically shoveling sand all day and getting covered in a mixture of dust, sand, and axle grease. I could definitely understand that in light of other issues, sometimes you have to appreciate what changes you can actually get. I could appreciate that when you try to make changes in favor of the working class, the old ruling class is not going to leave you alone, and you are going to have to fight. I was educated enough at the time to know that Russian politics and society of that era were by no means 'civil' by modern standards. Yet if someone were to tell me that Marxism as they preached it would emancipate me, but all those revolutions and states had nothing to do with Marxism, I'd be gone in a heartbeat. One of the reasons why I resisted Marxism for so many years was because of nonsense like this. And that is ignoring all the insane contradictions in Trotsky's theories.

Then of course there are the Anarchists. These geniuses have a 100% failure rate when it comes to constructing a society, but rest assured their society would be far better than anything else out there, including Communism! Just pay no attention to the fact that the only time they have been able to maintain some sense of society came in the context of two major wars. They never smashed any states, someone else did that for them. The common argument I get is "it's not fair to point out our failure, we were crushed by overwhelming military power!" Well until your ideology can initiate a revolution on its own for a change, and sustain the inevitable counter-revolution, that's too damn bad. The Red Army withstood the military might not only of the Whites but of the many interventionalist forces, then withstood one of the largest military invasions in history by Europe's greatest military power and her allies in WWII. Anarchists continually put ideals above reality, get their asses kicked, and then think they should get a free pass to criticize Communist states because they failed to reach their end goal, ignoring all the massive achievements they gained while accepting any anti-Communist claim uncritically at the drop of a hat, so long as it serves their purposes. On one occasion, Anarchists in Spain had been forewarned that the Fascists were approaching their city. Always the idealists, the Anarchists refused to build fortifications and dig trenches based on the idea that this showed cowardice. And these people criticize Stalin. You won't see them siding with Thomas Friedman or David Horowitz if the subject were globalization or US military intervention, but you can be damn sure they'll accept anything the latter two might have to say about the Soviet Union.

As one HU member pointed out, and I am paraphrasing here- the idea is that since these peoples' ideology has never really existed in the real world for any significant amount of time, they are basically blameless. They can criticize existing socialism all they want. What they fail to realize about their all-or-nothing ideologies, be they Anarchism or Trotskidiocy, is that when you uncritically accept the bourgeois narrative of socialist history, and when you suggest that either your impossible-to-achieve society or capitalism with perhaps reforms is the only choice, you are effectively defending capitalism. Yes Trot, you are defending capitalism. Yes Anarchist, you are defending capitalism no matter how many streets you dance in or trash cans you set on fire. Yes, we know you don't positively advocate capitalism, you are selling your own ideology. But because that ideology has been a proven failure that has never got off the ground anywhere, you are thus leading people towards failure and away from the only force that has shown it can oppose capitalism- Marxism-Leninism. Is it not telling that Anarchism or Trotskyism have been such failures, while Marxism-Leninism created dozens of socialist societies, which lasted even when the Marxist-Leninist concepts were discarded and actively sabotaged?

And this gets to the crux of the matter. I am not one to defend revisionism of the East Bloc or post-1956 Soviet Union, nor Cuba, China, etc. But no matter what I have to say about any of these states, I can at least accomplish what good they did when they were following a more or less Marxist path. Why do I have the ability to do this? Perhaps because I never was exposed to campus Communism and instead was working at various jobs starting at 14. Perhaps it was because I live in Eastern Europe and I can acknowledge, in agreement with many here who lived through the time, that even in the revisionist Soviet Union or Eastern Europe, there were advantages for working people. Perhaps it is because of my study of women trafficking, an industry that got a huge shot in the arm since the fall of revisionism. I still remember well the story of a girl in Viktor Malarek's book The Natashas, who was forced into the business while underage, and may have been raped as many as 1200 times. I remember how she begged her clients, NATO military personnel, to help her, and they either ignored it or even told her pimp with devastating consequences. Can you imagine why it might make my blood boil to hear someone tell me how terrible it was to live in the Soviet Union when they never even visited Eastern Europe at all?

The fact is that under Marxism-Leninism, and even under revisionism, these horrors were not happening. Even if we accepted without criticism all the disproven lies of anti-Communists about the so-called "crimes" of Communism, we ought to be able to look at the history of socialism since those alleged crimes, compare them to the far greater crimes that occurred in creating the capitalist industrialist powers, and suggest that perhaps this was necessary. Not so with the anarchist and Trots, more often than not young, in college, and living in privileged nations. All or nothing it is for them. And on the part of the anarchists, they have not a leg to stand on to declare, with the same glee as a neo-conservative, that Marxism 'failed'. The comparison is pretty simple; the Wright Brothers' plane, in comparison to subsequent advances in aviation, failed for all intents and purposes. By stark contrast, it was leagues ahead of all the ridiculous flying machine contraptions that preceded it. Remember those old films depicting guys riding bicycles off of cliffs with wings attached? That's anarchism. When there's a good wind, like a revolution started by Bolsheviks in 1917, or a state crisis such as the military uprising in Spain in 1936, they might get some distance, but they always land flat on their face.

The fact is that Marxism-Leninism accomplished something. It created nations, it liberated nations from colonial prisons, in eliminated illiteracy, it fought Islamic and Christian fundamentalism, it modernized agriculture and industrialized some of the most backward nations on earth, it defeated Fascism at its apogee, it kept US imperialism at bay, it reconciled ethnic tensions, it brought universal health-care, women's rights, ended child labor, suppressed and even eliminated prostitution; all these things during the time it existed, to varying degrees. And yet when we listen to the list of anarchist and Trotskyist accomplishments, we are treated to the symphony of crickets. And yet these folks still insist that their idea is somehow superior, in spite of all evidence to the contrary. Even when they lose, they win, according to their debate tactics. It's easy to criticize existing systems when yours has never been in the driver's seat.

Lastly, for the sake of argument, let me point out that just because an argument or claim comes from the ruling class' intellectuals, this does not necessarily mean that it must be false. Indeed many false claims of the anti-Communists actually originate either from Trotsky or Khruschev. But it one ought to expect that anyone who is supposedly an anti-Communist ought to be a little more critical, seeing that it's not as if anti-Communists don't have a slough of arguments ready to attack anyone who claims to be anti-capitalist. You can't fight them tooth and nail one minute, and accept every word they say the next just because it suits you politically. More than this, the anti-Communist narrative of 'Communist crimes' is in fact largely a matter of fallacious perspective, once you break down their telephone number death-tolls with factual evidence. Much of what is left entails considering those things which are or have been commonplace under capitalism to be intentional, 'crimes' when they occur under any socialist regime. And if you can make that leap, what right does an anarchist have to defend the very real atrocities committed in Spain by anarchists, which were often opposed by the Communists? What right has an anarchist to criticize the Soviet Union under Stalin, going along with the anti-Communist narrative that casts so many political prisoners as automatically innocent, while insisting that those killed by anarchists in Spain must have been true Fascist sympathizers? A logical person can conclude that perhaps a great many of those killed were fifth-columnists, but one must also apply that logic to the USSR as well, in light of the archival studies that have been done regarding the purges and GULAG system.

In conclusion, there is a serious problem when one can find themselves in a debate with self-proclaimed anti-capitalists, whose arguments seem no different than that of anti-Communists and in some cases even Fascists. One of the last arguments I was in focused on rape in Eastern Europe in 1944-45. I was surprised to find the anarchists and Trots to be arguing this case using the same tactics so common amongst Neo-Nazis. Who could possibly suggest that this occurrence was somehow related to 'Stalinism'? What it all goes to show is that Trotskidiocy and anarchism are de facto pro-capitalist, and in the past have been de facto pro-Fascist from time to time. If you propagate propaganda which aids capitalists and Fascists, while not presenting any viable alternative to capitalism, and while attacking Marxist-Leninists who have proven accomplishments in this respect, you are indirectly aiding the ruling class. Perhaps in the 30's, they had an excuse, but decades later with the benefit of hindsight there are no excuses left. Marxism got somewhere, Anarchism and Trotskidiocy never made it off the tarmac. Ergo Marxism-Leninism is the correct line against capitalism, and victory is a matter of correcting those mistakes which were made in its application, as opposed to these other ideologies which were based on shaky foundations and mistakes from the beginning. And finally, just for the benefit of the doubt, I try to remind these people that even if somehow Anarchism or Trotskyism could ever be successful in the future, it would never have achieved one inch of progress had it not been based on an honest, materialistic analysis of existing socialism, and as such Marxism-Leninism and real-world socialism would inevitably be linked to the foundation of that future hypothetical society. Of course I'm not going to hold my breath.

Rant over.

Young people are more attracted to leftist politics, and educated people are more likely to be involved in politics, especially of the leftist kind. So, it is no surprise that college students are attracted to leftism of ALL stripes, including Stalinism.

(Not to mention that there are plenty of non-Stalinist/non-Revisionist/non-Maoist revolutions in the 20th century, so I won't be opposing EVERY or even a majority of revolution by rejecting the Soviet Union's shit.)

The universal narrative seems to be that anarchism simply needs to evolve into a sort of Cantonalism

HomelessArtist wrote:I was going to write a detalied replay to Uberak's post but on the first quarter I released something, slavsocialist's post is a rant, based more on emotion than than logic, hyperbole is the default rhetorical figure and therfore it isn't worth much time or words to debate it; you fell for the same vice that many liberals on the internet have fallen for: taking every word straight and thinking it worths more words to take it down. Not every post on the internet deserves this much attention specially if it has such an angry tone.

Nonless there are some points I like to argue:

Young people are more attracted to leftist politics, and educated people are more likely to be involved in politics, especially of the leftist kind. So, it is no surprise that college students are attracted to leftism of ALL stripes, including Stalinism.

I sense that youth goes left and right equally, that's why there are so many righties online.
From what Ive heard small town colleges and similar are not so left leaning and some times down right neocon but calling those university fops leftists is a ... wrong statement, they don't care about class, some of them are just downright anti-working class and the only thing they care about is advancing their class, the middle class and its values.

(Not to mention that there are plenty of non-Stalinist/non-Revisionist/non-Maoist revolutions in the 20th century, so I won't be opposing EVERY or even a majority of revolution by rejecting the Soviet Union's shit.)

Liberal and conservative revolutions too; a revolution is not something that relly means progress.

The universal narrative seems to be that anarchism simply needs to evolve into a sort of Cantonalism

Yes! It should! But there are no anarchists for that, we only have archophobes left afraid of anything that resambles organization. Anarchism isn't about the lack of state but the lack of hierarchies but people has forgotten that, look at the iroquois league, they ere the ideal model for an anarchist/communist society.

younger people are inherently more likely to advocate for social change

their system was actually more akin to a confederation of hereditary tribal chieftains

Uberak wrote:Okay, I am going to deconstruct this part by part based on the main arguments that you're presenting in your rant...