Trump Trainwreck - Ongoing diary of betrayal and evil

[Bob Butler 54]

(11-22-2016, 04:30 PM)playwrite Wrote: Some early betrayals are indicated:


- Not going to lock her up apparently
- Not going to go after China as a "currency manipulator"
- Not going to renegotiate NAFTA

I'm down with these betrayals because to a greater or lesser degree the promises were evil.

Just imagining some disappointment by the Trumpocrats.  I'm sure they'll let these pass as pragmatic but I'm also sure there's an ember of doubt been planted way down in those brains somewhere; its going to be fun to watch it grow.

Now he's disavowing the alt right.

CNN Wrote:President-elect Donald Trump denied Tuesday that he did anything to energize the "alt-right" movement through his presidential campaign and sought to distance himself from it, even though many of the movement's leaders have sought to tether their political views to Trump's rise.

"I don't want to energize the group, and I disavow the group," Trump told a group of New York Times reporters and columnists during a meeting at the newspaper's headquarters in New York.

"It's not a group I want to energize, and if they are energized, I want to look into it and find out why," he added, according to one of the Times reporters in the room, Michael Grynbaum.

I expect any number of people are ready to explain why.

I'm beginning to wonder, if he keeps morphing away from his campaign rhetoric and posturing, how long before he's a Democrat again?

[Bob Butler 54]

One step closer.  He's reconsidering his position on climate change.

CNN Wrote:On the campaign trail, Trump had pledged to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accords -- a move that would upend global efforts to address global warming.

Tuesday, he wasn't as specific.

"I'm looking at it very closely. I have an open mind to it," he said.

It was part of a broader change for the President-elect on the topic of climate science. He had previously rejected scientists' conclusion that humans have played a role in the earth's warming. But on Tuesday, Trump said that "I think there is some connectivity" between humans and climate change, although he declined to elaborate.

A big gap between what a politician says he will do and what he actually does isn't surprising.  Anyone want to suggest someone who flipped this much immediately after an election?

Mind you, I'm not complaining about most of the flips.  Mostly, the old Trump spoke to attract the Republican base, while the new Trump might be more in touch with reality.

[Bob Butler 54]

Is waterboarding next?

CNN Wrote:President-elect Donald Trump said a conversation with Ret. Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis gave him a new perspective on waterboarding, a torture tool he has pledged to reinstate.

"General Mattis is a strong, highly dignified man. I met with him at length and I asked him that question. I said, 'What do you think of waterboarding?'" the Trump told The New York Times on Tuesday. "He said -- I was surprised -- he said, 'I've never found it to be useful.' He said, 'I've always found, give me a pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers and I do better with that than I do with torture.'"

[Eric the Green]

(11-23-2016, 04:23 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: One step closer.  He's reconsidering his position on climate change.

CNN Wrote:On the campaign trail, Trump had pledged to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accords -- a move that would upend global efforts to address global warming.

Tuesday, he wasn't as specific.

"I'm looking at it very closely. I have an open mind to it," he said.

It was part of a broader change for the President-elect on the topic of climate science. He had previously rejected scientists' conclusion that humans have played a role in the earth's warming. But on Tuesday, Trump said that "I think there is some connectivity" between humans and climate change, although he declined to elaborate.

A big gap between what a politician says he will do and what he actually does isn't surprising.  Anyone want to suggest someone who flipped this much immediately after an election?

Mind you, I'm not complaining about most of the flips.  Mostly, the old Trump spoke to attract the Republican base, while the new Trump might be more in touch with reality.

Trump has never been consistent in what he says. Recall the videos in which Trump earlier all but endorsed Hillary Clinton and the Democrats.

However, his appointment designations have so far been abominable. What he does will be the test of whether he is some kind of moderate or some kind of right-winger. I suspect that he may do well at reassuring people, and then turn around and do horrible things. But I hope and pray that I am wrong.

I have written before, that-- empirically according to the aspects in his chart-- he may actually do a pretty good job. But that is based on (a) my choice of which presidents are "the best" and (b) a rather small sample of those.

[Eric the Green]

I'm now taking best on whether or not the voters will do it to themselves again in 2018 and 2020.

Struggling White Voters Who Helped Elect Trump Are Headed for Some Serious Pain
A lot of low-income voters believed Trump when he promised to make America great. They’re in for a rude awakening.
By Joshua Holland
https://www.thenation.com/article/strugg...s-remorse/


Demonstrators hold signs in support of President-elect Donald Trump in Oceanside, California, November 11, 2016. (Reuters / Sandy Huffaker)

Donald Trump ran on a series of impossible promises, but enough people believed he could deliver on them that he won the Electoral College. His supporters are in for what might be the rudest awakening in recent political history.

Immediately after the election, the candidate who ran against the establishment, the guy who promised to “drain the swamp,” immediately surrounded himself with party hacks and lobbyists. He announced that Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus, perhaps the most prominent face of the dreaded “establishment,” would be his chief of staff. Good-government advocates expect the Trump regime to gut what remains of our already tattered campaign-finance laws. Reuters reports that, “despite his professed opposition to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, President-elect Donald Trump is considering several of the major advocates of that war for top national security posts.” And as Politico’s Ben White put it, “a populist candidate who railed against shady financial interests on the campaign trail is now putting together an administration that looks like an investment banker’s dream.”

Trump’s not going to make coal cheaper than natural gas and bring back a bunch of mining jobs. He might be able to negotiate some new riders for NAFTA, but they’ll be guided by the same corporate lobbyists who effectively wrote it in the first place, and won’t do anything to bring back jobs that have been sent overseas. There will be no 35 percent tariff on imports from Mexico or China.

It’s the rural poor who are going to be hit especially hard by the coming bait-and-switch.

The exit polls show that Trump beat Clinton among affluent voters, and Americans up and down the economic ladder responded to his dog whistles, or at least voted for their party despite the bigotry displayed by its nominee. But Trump made huge gains over Mitt Romney among those making $30,000 or less, and benefited from a major urban-rural divide. And it’s the rural poor who put him over the top in key swing states who are going to be hit especially hard by the coming bait and switch.

An analysis of the election results by researchers at the University of Washington found that the single greatest predictor for whether a county would swing toward Trump, relative to Mitt Romney’s performance in 2012, was a combination of short life expectancies and poor measures of public health. As a report in The Economist put it, “holding all other factors constant—including the share of non-college whites—the better physical shape a county’s residents are in, the worse Mr. Trump did relative to Mr. Romney.”

Clay County, Kentucky, is a profoundly depressed area in the heart of coal country. Whether its residents responded to Trump’s dog whistles or rolled the dice on a successful businessman to shake up a status quo that had failed them, the results suggest that they saw real hope in his election: Trump won the county 79-21. But according to NPR, a lot of folks in Clay County are now starting to worry about their health care, and with good reason. Kentucky set up an Obamacare exchange and expanded Medicaid under then-governor Steve Beshear, a Democrat, and today around one in three of the state’s residents are covered under the program. Kentucky’s uninsured rate dropped from 20 percent to just 7.5 percent over the course of two short years. In Clay County, where almost four in 10 live in poverty, 60 percent of the population relies on Medicaid, and Matt Bevin, the Republican governor who took over in 2015, wants to roll back the expansion if the federal government doesn’t sign off on his plan to charge beneficiaries higher premiums. Obama’s HHS was expected to reject Bevin’s scheme, but that’s unlikely to happen under Trump.

It is these very voters—less educated, struggling to get by on low incomes—who will bear the brunt of unified Republican government under Trump. The GOP Congress may give Trump his “infrastructure plan,” but that looks like it will consist of a bunch of tax cuts for investors to sink into toll bridges and toll roads. It will definitely give him the rest of his huge tax cuts, but those are skewed toward those at the top and won’t bring much relief to the “forgotten men and women of this country,” as he promised when campaigning. If the GOP repeals the Affordable Care Act, as it’s vowed to do since it was enacted, many of these voters will lose their subsidized health insurance. Block-granting Medicaid and privatizing Medicare will dramatically increase these their economic insecurity. They’ll lose food stamps and Head Start slots. They’ll lose access to reproductive health care. They can forget about a hike in the federal minimum wage. According to one estimate, 20 million Trump voters will lose out on a big raise when Republicans kill Obama’s overtime rule. And if the GOP doesn’t get rid of it entirely, they’ll at least hobble the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which reined in the kind of predatory lending schemes that often indenture the working poor. It’ll be death by a thousand cuts.

In a sense, Trump’s supporters are going to face the same realization that many progressives did when Barack Obama didn’t end racism or bring comity to Congress or usher in a new liberal golden age. Americans elect not only a president, but also over 2,000 members of a political coalition to policy-making positions across a sprawling government. Anyone who pins their hopes on an individual savior—like the people of Clay County, Kentucky—is guaranteed to be sorely disappointed. But in Trump’s case, the disappointment will be more profound, both because he promised more and because his party will likely have unified control of government for his entire first term and will own all of the pain he causes.

How struggling voters who pinned their hopes on Trump will ultimately react is a question that will be answered in the coming years. The best-case scenario is that they rethink support, or at least sit out the 2020 election. At worst, they’ll become more reactionary, and more likely to lash out at those they perceive as the other. What’s certain is that they’re headed for an epic case of buyers’ remorse.

[Eric the Green]

We were talking on the thread about those people in the rural areas, about why they stay put in these depressed areas. As Trump's policies condemn them to even more poverty, they may be forced to move to the cities. That's what happens in most poor countries when crops fail, landowners get greedy or poverty gets worse. In fact, I'm amazed that rural voters are still so numerous that they can swing an election.

But if they move to the cities, there's a chance a few of them become less provincial in their thinking, less wedded to the self-reliance meme, and more aware of the benefits of government services and regulations. It used to be one of the demographic trends in America and worldwide, that people moved to the cities, and cities expanded. Could this trend start back up again, and add to the demographic trend of increasing diversity-- likely to still be a factor given that hispanics don't soon forget insults and attacks on them?

Well, at this point I'm grasping for any kind of hope

[Ragnarök_62]

Eric the Green Wrote:We were talking on the thread about those people in the rural areas, about why they stay put in these depressed areas. As Trump's policies condemn them to even more poverty, they may be forced to move to the cities.

You're kidding right?  Just look at this   house price.

Quote:That's what happens in most poor countries when crops fail, landowners get greedy or poverty gets worse. In fact, I'm amazed that rural voters are still so numerous that they can swing an election.

I think folks would be better off doing the exact opposite. The best idea is to sell a house in bubbleland and go to nice cheap Oklahoma and retire on the house price differential.

Quote:But if they move to the cities, there's a chance a few of them become less provincial in their thinking, less wedded to the self-reliance meme, and more aware of the benefits of government services and regulations.

Well, if I moved to Silicone Valley, I'd have to live in :

Quote:It used to be one of the demographic trends in America and worldwide, that people moved to the cities, and cities expanded. Could this trend start back up again, and add to the demographic trend of increasing diversity-- likely to still be a factor given that hispanics don't soon forget insults and attacks on them?

Well, at this point I'm grasping for any kind of hope

Dunno,  C2H5-OH  , the social lubricant.     Paternal granny is from Arkansas.  Perhaps, take up an old family tradition, eh?

[Ragnarök_62]

(11-23-2016, 06:12 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: Lower cost of living.

Bingo.

Quote:Especially if someone doesn't have the skills and experience to work in tech / finance / media / etc. If a person has a McJob, where would they rather be? Paying out the nose at the coasts or living a bit better inland?

+Tech has an expiry date.  If ya get laid off and don't get a job in say a year, you go to the reject pile. That's when all you can get is ... McJob / McWages.

Quote: Another one is, even if in tech or other high paid career, people who want to recreate what they experienced growing up during the 70s need to move someplace like Placer County or out of state in order to afford the equivalent now. A number of the ones who've not moved away are either unmarried or if married, are child free. Once one does not have to worry about raising a family, options open up regarding where to live.

Well, if one wants to restrict to CA due to Weed legalization, here's an   an awesome choice!

I chose this specimen because of the carefree yard!

[pbrower2a]

(11-23-2016, 04:53 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: We were talking on the thread about those people in the rural areas, about why they stay put in these depressed areas. As Trump's policies condemn them to even more poverty, they may be forced to move to the cities. That's what happens in most poor countries when crops fail, landowners get greedy or poverty gets worse. In fact, I'm amazed that rural voters are still so numerous that they can swing an election.

But if they move to the cities, there's a chance a few of them become less provincial in their thinking, less wedded to the self-reliance meme, and more aware of the benefits of government services and regulations. It used to be one of the demographic trends in America and worldwide, that people moved to the cities, and cities expanded. Could this trend start back up again, and add to the demographic trend of increasing diversity-- likely to still be a factor given that hispanics don't soon forget insults and attacks on them?

Well, at this point I'm grasping for any kind of hope

(11-23-2016, 06:11 PM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote:

Eric the Green Wrote:We were talking on the thread about those people in the rural areas, about why they stay put in these depressed areas. As Trump's policies condemn them to even more poverty, they may be forced to move to the cities.

You're kidding right?  Just look at this   house price.

Quote:That's what happens in most poor countries when crops fail, landowners get greedy or poverty gets worse. In fact, I'm amazed that rural voters are still so numerous that they can swing an election.

I think folks would be better off doing the exact opposite. The best idea is to sell a house in bubbleland and go to nice cheap Oklahoma and retire on the house price differential.

Quote:But if they move to the cities, there's a chance a few of them become less provincial in their thinking, less wedded to the self-reliance meme, and more aware of the benefits of government services and regulations.

Well, if I moved to Silicone Valley, I'd have to live in :

Quote:It used to be one of the demographic trends in America and worldwide, that people moved to the cities, and cities expanded. Could this trend start back up again, and add to the demographic trend of increasing diversity-- likely to still be a factor given that hispanics don't soon forget insults and attacks on them?

Well, at this point I'm grasping for any kind of hope

Dunno,  C2H5-OH  , the social lubricant.     Paternal granny is from Arkansas.  Perhaps, take up an old family tradition, eh?

The best choice for many Americans will be to sell out overpriced houses in the USA and go elsewhere./ Net migration from the Mexico to the USA is now negative.... figure that many Mexican citizens in California, with its stratospheric housing costs, makes selling a house in California, taking the proceeds, and retiring in Mexico where housing and medical costs are far lower can make sense. One might gain a social notch just by doing so. If I had a Mexican or Mexican-American wife I would do so.

If things get really bad in rural America due to crop failures or farm foreclosures, then huge numbers of poor people making desperate moves to the Big Cities will only accentuate America's civic distress. Some kid who grows up on a farm in rural Ohio, gets a teaching degree in Ohio State and then stays in Greater Columbus will change in culture. After a certain time (30 miles away from a Best Buy/Barnes&Noble/Starbuck's/sushi restaurant? No way!) a return to rural America for any more than a weekend might become unthinkable. But with farm labors and dispossessed farmers going to the big cities in desperate efforts to find such few jobs that might open on occasion for unskilled labor indicates big trouble. That's when people start falling for anything rhetorical as an antithesis to what the people in power have.

I figure that the Trump Administration, both Houses of Congress, and most state legislatures will do everything possible to make liberalism permanently irrelevant to American politics. Such opens America to extremism, both of the extreme Left and Right. Having coarsened the level of political discourse by delving into racist rhetoric outside any part of the Establishment since the 1960s. President Trump has potentially unleashed the whirlwind of genocide if desperately-poor people see race as the menace. On the other side, a combination of extreme poverty, lack of opportunity, economic instability, personal dislocation, a government either unwilling or unable to mitigate mass distress, and the absence of effective democracy while economic elites indulge themselves without restraint makes a Socialist insurrection possible. It may be hard to believe that America could become a sick society fast enough for such to happen, but history can move fast.

Another possibility, one that may be even closer, will be for the United States to splinter into sundry new entities. Some might resemble American states, but some will have strange worm-like shapes that connect big cities that one might not imagine on a current map.  Some will simply be city-states. Most of the territory will be an impressive, still-gigantic state in area, but it will largely be the rural void without giant or even medium-sized cities. In some such places one will need to fly the Confederate flag to show loyalty -- and keeping a portrait of Barack Obama will be cause for summary execution.

This will be an economic disaster. In the chaos of rural areas denying food and energy to urban folks and cities denying port facilities for shipping foodstuffs, people will eventually decide upon some new political order. It will not be what we have now, for it will have failed. A new constitutional arrangement will be necessary to prevent any relapse of  despotism or dictatorship, and people in all parts of what remains of the USA or its successor will need to force radical changes upon the culture.

[Eric the Green]

(11-23-2016, 06:11 PM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote: You're kidding right?  Just look at this   house price.

I didn't specifically say they might move to MY city! There's plenty of other cities in America.

Quote:

Quote:That's what happens in most poor countries when crops fail, landowners get greedy or poverty gets worse. In fact, I'm amazed that rural voters are still so numerous that they can swing an election.

I think folks would be better off doing the exact opposite. The best idea is to sell a house in bubbleland and go to nice cheap Oklahoma and retire on the house price differential.

The problem being that the peoples' mindset out there in rural red America (present cyber-company excepted) is anathema to most people in bubbleland. So, we're stuck here.

It might work economically, for someone who can bring his/her California nest egg with them and don't have to depend on the red state economy. But, economics isn't everything, though "pecuniary" Rags might be tempted to think so. For my money, it's worth it to live in a blue state. And there are bargains here if you can find them, and we do have a government that's willing to help out in various ways.

[Bob Butler 54]

(11-23-2016, 08:24 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: I figure that the Trump Administration, both Houses of Congress, and most state legislatures will do everything possible to make liberalism permanently  irrelevant to American politics. Such opens America to extremism, both of the extreme Left and Right.

Both parties, after winning any sort of majority, no matter how thin and tenuous, have interpreted it as a mandate, have tried to push their culture on the other half of the country.  Health care!  Transgender bathrooms!  Gay weddings!  Pushing a mandate when one doesn't really have one is a good way of losing power.  Thus, through the duration of the unravelling neither party has been able to truly push their values in a sustained way.  There is the partisan notion that one's own values are correct, the other guy's wrong, that the other culture must be entirely defeated and suppressed.  Attempting to do this results in political backlash.  The wannabe suppressor becomes the suppressed.

Perhaps forcing one's values on other people isn't always a great and wonderful idea?

At the moment the pendulum is swinging red.  Not so long ago the progressives were talking about demographics, that the blue leaning segments of the population are growing, the red shrinking, so progressive victory was inevitable.  I see values and cultures as incredibly stubborn.  Is it possible that trying to move either immovable object might not be the wisest of moves?  

I think the talk of the country falling apart is premature.  Trump talked an extreme red game through the campaign.  The harder he pushes that agenda in office, the greater the backlash I'd expect.  Thing is, he is shifting blue rather quickly, backing off many of the ideas that won him the angry red votes.  I don't think he is shifting far enough to avoid a backlash, and I don't know if the angry red voters will feel as betrayed by Trump as they felt about the establishment Republicans he defeated.  We'll have to see.  

My magic eight ball keeps coming up 'Answer hazy, try again later.'

[Odin]

(11-23-2016, 06:12 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote:

(11-23-2016, 04:53 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: We were talking on the thread about those people in the rural areas, about why they stay put in these depressed areas. As Trump's policies condemn them to even more poverty, they may be forced to move to the cities. That's what happens in most poor countries when crops fail, landowners get greedy or poverty gets worse. In fact, I'm amazed that rural voters are still so numerous that they can swing an election.

But if they move to the cities, there's a chance a few of them become less provincial in their thinking, less wedded to the self-reliance meme, and more aware of the benefits of government services and regulations. It used to be one of the demographic trends in America and worldwide, that people moved to the cities, and cities expanded. Could this trend start back up again, and add to the demographic trend of increasing diversity-- likely to still be a factor given that hispanics don't soon forget insults and attacks on them?

Well, at this point I'm grasping for any kind of hope

Lower cost of living.

Especially if someone doesn't have the skills and experience to work in tech / finance / media / etc. If a person has a McJob, where would they rather be? Paying out the nose at the coasts or living a bit better inland?

BTW - many of the people I went to high school with have left the Bay Area. We are not talking people who grew up in the East Bay or far North Bay here. These are people who grew up "upper middle class" on The Peninsula, although the ones who moved away mostly did not go into tech. That appears to be one of the key decision points. Another one is, even if in tech or other high paid career, people who want to recreate what they experienced growing up during the 70s need to move someplace like Placer County or out of state in order to afford the equivalent now. A number of the ones who've not moved away are either unmarried or if married, are child free. Once one does not have to worry about raising a family, options open up regarding where to live.

Bingo! Here in the Fargo area you can buy a nice house for what would only get you a shoe box in the Bay Area.

In rural areas you can be working class and still afford a decent house, my mom's home was $40,000 (in 1994 dollars).

[Eric the Green]

(11-24-2016, 06:27 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(11-23-2016, 08:24 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: I figure that the Trump Administration, both Houses of Congress, and most state legislatures will do everything possible to make liberalism permanently  irrelevant to American politics. Such opens America to extremism, both of the extreme Left and Right.

Both parties, after winning any sort of majority, no matter how thin and tenuous, have interpreted it as a mandate, have tried to push their culture on the other half of the country.  Health care!  Transgender bathrooms!  Gay weddings!  Pushing a mandate when one doesn't really have one is a good way of losing power.  Thus, through the duration of the unravelling neither party has been able to truly push their values in a sustained way.  There is the partisan notion that one's own values are correct, the other guy's wrong, that the other culture must be entirely defeated and suppressed.  Attempting to do this results in political backlash.  The wannabe suppressor becomes the suppressed.

Perhaps forcing one's values on other people isn't always a great and wonderful idea?

It's sort of natural, I think, for the blue side to want progress and real freedom and opportunity. We can't help it if too many people can't see it and resist it and want to go backwards towards the tyranny of the past. We still need to push, for everyone's benefit.

Quote:At the moment the pendulum is swinging red.  Not so long ago the progressives were talking about demographics, that the blue leaning segments of the population are growing, the red shrinking, so progressive victory was inevitable.  I see values and cultures as incredibly stubborn.  Is it possible that trying to move either immovable object might not be the wisest of moves?  

Wise or not, in regard to the likelihood of success, it still must be done. Yes, reactionaries are stubborn, especially in conservative, heavily-religious countries like the United States, Saudi Arabia, etc. But we push for progress, or we fall behind. Whether the regressives like it or not, we will keep pushing. It's human nature to do that; to keep pushing up into life, in spite of the forces of death. And evolution continues.

Quote:I think the talk of the country falling apart is premature.  Trump talked an extreme red game through the campaign.  The harder he pushes that agenda in office, the greater the backlash I'd expect.  Thing is, he is shifting blue rather quickly, backing off many of the ideas that won him the angry red votes.  I don't think he is shifting far enough to avoid a backlash, and I don't know if the angry red voters will feel as betrayed by Trump as they felt about the establishment Republicans he defeated.  We'll have to see.  

My magic eight ball keeps coming up 'Answer hazy, try again later.'

The talk always comes before the reality. These are the times in history when such talk is going to happen, and grow. Exactly how it shakes down, I have given my estimate. Even with the Republican winning this year, I had already laid out a scenario. I was by no means entirely sure that the Democrats would win this year, although I predicted it. I thought Hillary would win, and I also knew Trump could win, but it was too horrific a prospect for me ever to forecast. But, here we are. Like I said, Trump shifts his way of talking all the time, even in mid-sentence. But his appointments so far are horrific, and they keep coming up snake eyes, every day so far. Not a one has been to any degree acceptable, except to regressives.

[Eric the Green]

Of course, I also embrace a somewhat-different view about values and evolution, which I have referred you to before Bob, and it's a bit more tolerant than a strictly-progressive view, although you have given me no indication that you have read about it here:
http://philosopherswheel.com/planetarydynamics.html

But it's a very interesting and applicable view to what's going on and the discussion of stubbornly-held valus, and there are links to other authors there too who might not have my more-symbolic take on it. It's called spiral dynamics and integral philosophy, and suggests that although values succeed each other dynamically through progress, each new values meme both transcends and includes the previous ones. So, the question is how can we battle the previous values meme, and yet respect it and honor its place within an integrated whole? I'm not sure how that works, except as you say to at least respect the value of previous values memes (called vmemes for short in spiral dynamics).

The Green meme of all-one-people on one-green-planet is the top of the scale, and sometimes includes also what I inserted called the Lemon-colored meme (socialist). But beyond and above the Green meme are the integral memes (labelled Yellow and Turquoise) in which all the memes up and down the scale are seen as parts of a dynamic whole, each in its place in a "nested hierarchy."

Stretching below the Green (and Lemon) memes of course are the Orange Meme (competition/capitalist industry), the Brown Meme which I have inserted (secular or royal state), the Blue Meme (moral authority), the Red Meme (male war gods and emperors), the Pink Meme which I have inserted (agricultural, feminine fruitfulness), the Purple Meme (tribal and magical thinking) and the Beige Meme (instinctive).

[Bob Butler 54]

(11-24-2016, 05:50 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: It's sort of natural, I think, for the blue side to want progress and real freedom and opportunity. We can't help it if too many people can't see it and resist it and want to go backwards towards the tyranny of the past. We still need to push, for everyone's benefit...

Wise or not, in regard to the likelihood of success, it still must be done. Yes, reactionaries are stubborn, especially in conservative, heavily-religious countries like the United States, Saudi Arabia, etc. But we push for progress, or we fall behind. Whether the regressives like it or not, we will keep pushing. It's human nature to do that; to keep pushing up into life, in spite of the forces of death. And evolution continues.

In past American crises, the problems have been clear and drastic.  The need for transformation is in your face obvious.  The progressive can and do solve the problem by submarining the conservatives, just brute for taking over and doing it, with muzzle loading firearms settling two of the larger arguments.  Your attitude suggests a repeat of that pattern.  If I thought you could get a clear majority, a president and a filibuster proof congress, I'd be with you.  The clean way to resolve a 4T is with a solid consensus that certain problems are intolerable.  The progressives will take over, send the Royal Loyalists to Canada and free the slaves.

That requires a critical mass of votes.  The critical mass of votes requires an intolerable problem and consensus on how to solve it.  The pattern we have seen in this endless unravelling with no regeneracy in sight suggests that we might not get the sort of successful culture transforming crisis that S&H predicted.

It might yet happen.  I'd like to at least consider and talk about whether it can happen, whether we should try to make it happen.  We've seen enough dystopian variations of crisis proposed by various folk both red and blue, with the country splitting and rural / urban conflict.  We've seen both red and blue claims that their values will ultimately clearly win at the ballot box.  My magic 8 ball is hazy.  I guess you must do what your values say you have to do, but I don't know if it is possible and wise.

Mind you, I generally favor blue values.  A nice clean traditional progressive transformation of the county that resolves a good number of problems would be a nice thing from my perspective.  I'd just like people to consider if going for it is entirely prudent.  Do we have to force red states onto Obamacare?  Do we have to have transgender bathrooms in red states?  Do we have to force bakers to sell wedding cakes with two tiny wax brides on top?  Do we have to force police departments to improve training so that fewer minorities are shot without real cause?

Well, yes, some fights should be fought.  It is also possible to push unnecessary fights and rile up the opposition for no good reason.

[Ragnarök_62]

(11-24-2016, 05:18 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

Quote:I didn't specifically say they might move to MY city! There's plenty of other cities in America.

But, but San Jose is just so famous.





This song came out when I was 6.  It's just one of those songs that gets stuck in my head.

Quote:

Quote:That's what happens in most poor countries when crops fail, landowners get greedy or poverty gets worse. In fact, I'm amazed that rural voters are still so numerous that they can swing an election.

Quote:The problem being that the peoples' mindset out there in rural red America (present cyber-company excepted) is anathema to most people in bubbleland. So, we're stuck here.

Eric, Eric, I already picked a nice house (IMHO) and showed it to XY_4AD.  Just look at this gem! It has everything I like. A nice low,low price and no lawn. Just think of the CO2 emissions that sort of yard saves.  And the mindless effort of messing with that nasty 1950's relic, a lawn. It's in ocean blue California even. I'd add a little greenery though. I think some prickly pear cactus and if y'all can legalize peyote, I can plant that. XY_4AD, hmmm. mentioned Placer county. Let's see what the ol'e interwebs comes up with there.

Here's something.

Quote:It might work economically, for someone who can bring his/her California nest egg with them and don't have to depend on the red state economy. But, economics isn't everything, though "pecuniary" Rags might be tempted to think so. For my money, it's worth it to live in a blue state. And there are bargains here if you can find them, and we do have a government that's willing to help out in various ways.

You are correct. There are bargains to be had in California of all places. The best part of said bargains is that they're located in areas not affected by suburban sprawl and the ensuing traffic headaches like I endured in Houston. I'm guessing I can indulge in a pecuniary pass time in Placer county. I can go out and pan for gold. Placer county is named after placer gold deposits.

[pbrower2a]

In case you thought that the President-Elect could do little harm with education, then think again. How about appointing someone who thinks that working-class kids would do just as well by being shoved into the underpaid workforce?

Quote:A think tank funded by Donald Trump’s Secretary of Education pick recently advocated for putting kids back in the workforce.

The Acton Institute, a conservative nonprofit that is said to have received thousands of dollars in donations from Betsy DeVos and her family, posted an essay to its blog this month that called child labor “a gift our kids can handle.”

“Let us not just teach our children to play hard and study well, shuffling them through a long line of hobbies and electives and educational activities,” said the post’s author, Joseph Sunde. “A long day’s work and a load of sweat have plenty to teach as well.”

Child labor isn’t universally forbidden in the U.S.― actors and newspaper deliverers are two exceptions― but it is tightly regulated.

DeVos was a member of Acton’s Board of Directors for 10 years and while it’s unclear how much influence she currently has on the organization, its homepage now prominently features a message congratulating DeVos on her nomination.

The essay raises serious questions about the woman who would potentially be in charge of U.S. public schools. Education advocates have already expressed concern about DeVos’ history of supporting school voucher programs.

“In nominating DeVos, Trump makes it loud and clear that his education policy will focus on privatizing, defunding and destroying public education in America,” American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten said.

“She has lobbied for failed schemes, like vouchers — which take away funding and local control from our public schools — to fund private schools at taxpayers’ expense,” the National Education Association said. “These schemes do nothing to help our most-vulnerable students while they ignore or exacerbate glaring opportunity gaps. She has consistently pushed a corporate agenda to privatize, de-professionalize and impose cookie-cutter solutions to public education.”

Trump’s team did not immediately return a request for comment.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bets...af95edf12e
My comment:

 I am well satisfied that being overworked and underpaid  in tasks of sheer drudgery as a child does little to prepare a child for anything other than being overworked and underpaid in tasks of sheer drudgery. The most effective teaching that I have ever known has elements of play.

Maybe we are finding out the hard way what "MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN" means -- going back about 120 years, when working-class kids were spared the irrelevancy of schooling so that they could work to replace their parents worn out by age 35 in 70-hour workweeks of back-breaking toil.

Does anyone want to turn the calendar back 120 years or so? Sure, times were wonderful for the economic elites of the time.... but except for revolutions and wars that topple elites and the harsh justice against recently-overthrown elites held culpable for everything that went wrong, aren't most times great for elites? The middle class? If one was lucky enough to be in it, real estate was cheap and spacious. But there was no plethora of white-collar jobs that make possible the urban sprawl of giant blocks of tiny condominiums, strip malls, ten-lane expressways inadequate for the traffic upon them.  The least problematic aspect of a return to the past would be the disappearance of the technologies of entertainment. Television numbs us, the popular music of our time isn't an improvement from the ragtime of Scott Joplin's time, and the correspondence that people used to send was far wittier and more thoughtful than the instantaneous communications on the telephone. But return to the social norms of the Gilded Age? That is the ugly capitalism of Marxist stereotypes, the sort of order that a decent person would seek to reform, if not overthrow.

  
Here's a reminder of how and things would be if Donald Trump and his political figures got their way, except that he would not cast off modern technology.

The Good Old Days -- They Were Terrible

[Eric the Green]

What a horrific pick as "Education Secretary." More like education demolisher. She is well-known too as an advocate of "school choice." Besides the facts that show vouchers don't work, they take away public support for public schools, so that they further decline and this increasingly reserves education for the white and wealthy. But, that's "making America great again."

Trump wants to abolish the Department of Education, and this means states will have to pick up more of the tab too. That will suit the politicians in the flyover country well, so the red state governments can keep their schools unfunded and their citizens ignorant, and thus they will continue to vote for them.

[pbrower2a]

We Americans are in for a very hard lesson in civics for the next four years.

[Eric the Green]

(11-25-2016, 04:47 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: We Americans are in for a very hard lesson in civics for the next four years.

I hope we don't flunk the class again, as we did in 2004.