Election 2020

[Classic-Xer]

(11-13-2020, 12:51 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(11-11-2020, 10:42 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(11-11-2020, 09:14 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Who cares? Biden won. So, what's so great about Bumbling Biden? I didn't see anything great about Biden. So, what do you know about Biden? Was Biden ever great? Well, I have to say is he better be great because that's what the Democrats are going to keep the country and fulfill all of its obligations or find themselves being depleted and directly competing with America itself. We're going to win dude because nature always wins.

They said much the same of the governor of New York, FDR.  The reason FDR got elected in as decisive an election as Biden was because their predecessors went with the old values and did not address the primary problem the culture was facing.  Not a good idea in a crisis.  Yet, Hoover thought he shouldn’t try to regulate the economy or find jobs, and Trump aligned against solving the bug and racist violent policing.  For that matter, Buchanan was all in favor of slavery.

I figure that the time makes the man, not the other way around.  In a crisis the old values fail and are dumped on, but that cannot happen until they and the new values have been debated and a bad president who tries to implement the old values after their time is passing, and shows their weakness and failure.  At that point the grey champion steps in and oversees the new values.  He later gets the credit associated, perhaps not fully deserved.

I would not have picked Biden either, but right now he is set up in a good place.

Joe Biden will at the least recover some of the social virtues of the recent past, virtues that Donald Trump brushed off. Maybe he gets a chance to start anew what Obama started and take it further into real progress for more Americans. 

He has said that he wants to earn the trust of people who did not vote for him, and that will take not doing something that Donald Trump did to us: Trump stuck it to those who voted against him. To be sure there are toxic people, typically extremists, who demand what a sane leadership can never offer. Trump acted as if the fascistic Alt Right was a constituency worth cultivating. Such people are nothing but trouble. If a politician wants to cultivate people as a new part of the base, then seeking the votes of people whom the Other Side has taken for granted for decades but don't offend one's moral values is a good idea. That is how Dwight Eisenhower won over the Mormons. Don't fool yourself; we Democrats would love to have them on our side in partisan politics again. The Alt Right? Marxist-Leninists? Neo-Nazis? The Klan? Pedophilia advocates? They can get lost.

It's hard to see what the Republican Party has to offer unless it can sell out the ideology of Donald Trump. There will be a need for a Loyal Opposition.

What social virtues are you talking about? How is he going to earn the trust of the Trump supporters? Is he going to take on China? Is he going to put America First and piss off half his donors? The dude is a sell out you know and if you didn't know that then you heard it from me first.

[Classic-Xer]

(11-13-2020, 01:40 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(11-12-2020, 08:21 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(11-12-2020, 10:13 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(11-12-2020, 05:34 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(11-12-2020, 01:25 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Biden represents the old values ( FDR/ LBJ/ Obama values) or failing values as you say. Popularity isn't much of a factor when it comes to ones actual abilities to get anything done. You can say what you want but Trump got things done. We're still more or less a fifty country that's more or less dead locked which is a far cry from where FDR was, LBJ was and Obama was back in 08'.

Racism and white supremacy is the old values.  Being in favor of the working man is the new.  Science over fantasy is the new.

You are sort of correct but mostly wrong in saying popularity isn’t a factor.  The dominant factor of the unraveling is that there was a bigger white supremacy vote than minority and worker vote.  As a result, jobs went overseas, benefits cut, labor unions weakened, and the younger generations sunk into poverty as domestic spending was consistently cut.  The red were centered on the Neo con, the racists, the elite, the religious.  Culture war issues were put ahead of the working man and the minorities.

It doesn’t look like that is going to continue.

Let me weigh-in with a third opinion.  The old values are the Reagan neoliberal fantasies that we're all alone and we either make it or we're failures.  It's been sold in many flavors for the last 40+ years, and is now perceived wisdom.   Trump's followers believe it, even though it hurts them every day.  But the competitive model is now the only model, so they cheer-on their side and take a hit for the team.  It's zero-sum, and they need to win!

If the Dems ever succeed, it will be with a cooperative model that allows everyone to gain, not just a few.  First, the idea needs to be believed, and that's where the challenge lies.  Remember, Goldwater sold the neoliberal fantasy in 1964 and got slaughtered. New ideas don't just take hold on their own.

You're really talking about self reliance and our commitment to self reliance and independence since the two go hand in hand. I get the impression that you don't like us very much for that reason  and view us as a threat to to an ideology which cultivates and requires the opposite for it to work. Well, guess what, there's 60 some million of us and 10 million more who want to be like us who showed up on election day during a national pandemic that half the country has been traumatized by its existence.

Do you know what self-reliance really is?

We were more self-reliant in the past, when technologies were cruder and business practices were different. I look at an old movie such as Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times (from 1936) and notice that the department store in which the Tramp character got a job as a night watchman sold fabric to be sewn into clothes to fit Wifey's husbands, kids, and herself. To be sure, the traditional department store seems to be a dying institution, but the practice of women buying fabric to sew into clothes was over before my time (and I am old. 64 is old enough to be something of a misfit in this world). Now let's look at the cars of the 1930's. The cars operated on machinery far easier to understand than what we now have. Someone with my below-average mechanical skills could have done some minor repairs on parts far easier to identify as culprits and replace or even mend than is so on their more recent analogues. (OK, cars have catalytic converters, safety devices, and of course air-conditioning units that make things safer, more ecologically-friendly, more comfortable --- and much more complex). I remember people making their own ice cream for an ice-cream "sociable" because there might not be an ice-cream parlor readily available.  If you want even more self-reliance, go back to the days of the horse and buggy, when electronic entertainments were scarce and not very good. If you wanted some music you heard it live or made your own. 

What killed self-reliance? 

1. Technology that allowed people to do things easily that were once difficult. Selecting a frequency on a radio set is far easier than playing a violin. 
2. Big Business, which made technologies easy to use, and available cheaply through mass production and mass marketing. 
3. People leaving rural life for the Big City (or later, the suburbs.
4. People insisting on more 'professional' entertainment than what they struggled to do. Have you ever heard a small child violin, usually not in tune?  5. The welfare state that Big Business makes necessary due to the economic dislocations that come with a mass economy and technological change. 

Ideology plays little role in the decline of self-reliance.

Self reliance means what it means. If you don't know and understand what it means then look it up in a dictionary. Have you ever been self reliant?

[pbrower2a]

(11-13-2020, 09:21 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(11-13-2020, 12:51 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(11-11-2020, 10:42 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(11-11-2020, 09:14 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Who cares? Biden won. So, what's so great about Bumbling Biden? I didn't see anything great about Biden. So, what do you know about Biden? Was Biden ever great? Well, I have to say is he better be great because that's what the Democrats are going to keep the country and fulfill all of its obligations or find themselves being depleted and directly competing with America itself. We're going to win dude because nature always wins.

They said much the same of the governor of New York, FDR.  The reason FDR got elected in as decisive an election as Biden was because their predecessors went with the old values and did not address the primary problem the culture was facing.  Not a good idea in a crisis.  Yet, Hoover thought he shouldn’t try to regulate the economy or find jobs, and Trump aligned against solving the bug and racist violent policing.  For that matter, Buchanan was all in favor of slavery.

I figure that the time makes the man, not the other way around.  In a crisis the old values fail and are dumped on, but that cannot happen until they and the new values have been debated and a bad president who tries to implement the old values after their time is passing, and shows their weakness and failure.  At that point the grey champion steps in and oversees the new values.  He later gets the credit associated, perhaps not fully deserved.

I would not have picked Biden either, but right now he is set up in a good place.

Joe Biden will at the least recover some of the social virtues of the recent past, virtues that Donald Trump brushed off. Maybe he gets a chance to start anew what Obama started and take it further into real progress for more Americans. 

He has said that he wants to earn the trust of people who did not vote for him, and that will take not doing something that Donald Trump did to us: Trump stuck it to those who voted against him. To be sure there are toxic people, typically extremists, who demand what a sane leadership can never offer. Trump acted as if the fascistic Alt Right was a constituency worth cultivating. Such people are nothing but trouble. If a politician wants to cultivate people as a new part of the base, then seeking the votes of people whom the Other Side has taken for granted for decades but don't offend one's moral values is a good idea. That is how Dwight Eisenhower won over the Mormons. Don't fool yourself; we Democrats would love to have them on our side in partisan politics again. The Alt Right? Marxist-Leninists? Neo-Nazis? The Klan? Pedophilia advocates? They can get lost.

It's hard to see what the Republican Party has to offer unless it can sell out the ideology of Donald Trump. There will be a need for a Loyal Opposition.

What social virtues are you talking about? How is he going to earn the trust of the Trump supporters? Is he going to take on China? Is he going to put America First and piss off half his donors? The dude is a sell out you know and if you didn't know that then you heard it from me first.

For one thing, the Constitution is far more important than the will of the President. 

Maybe you neglect something. Utah was a solid D state during the New Deal Era. As late as 1948 it was more Democratic than the US as a whole, boing nearly 54-45 for Harry Truman in the 1948 Presidential election.  Until then it went D except in R landslides. Apparently R pols nationwide were slow to allow statehood to Utah. After 50 years that was no longer relevant, and Eisenhower found that he could appeal to the Mormon hierarchy in Utah to win it over. Oh, did he win it over! Only in the 1964 disaster of Barry Goldwater has it since voted for a Democratic nominee for President. 

I may not like Mormon theology, but Mormons aren't bad people. The social order that they have established in Utah is a social order that closely imitates liberal norms and gets good results. That Mormons do not drink or smoke keeps a big chunk of the government from being devoured in the treatment of smoking-related and alcohol-related pathologies  that prove expensive and difficult (if not futile) to treat. So Utah does fairly well at social welfare -- like a typical Blue state.  

I'm a Democrat. I would love to have Mormons on my political side. They wouldn't be trouble. I contrast them to some loathsome people that Donald Trump cultivated as if they could make a difference in the election: neo-Nazis. I hate them. They are a disgrace to a big part of my ancestry (German -- and German-Americans think of Nazis about like most Italian-Americans think of the Mafia). If I had to choose between being a Nazi and a Jew I would be a Jew, for such would cause me no fewer compromises of my ethical and cultural values. (In case you think that German-American families in rural  America listen to much Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt,  Schubert, Schumann, Bruckner, and Brahms, then you are wrong. It's mostly country music for adults and a surprising amount of rap (which I would not dignify with the description "music") among youth. Yuck!   

But back to the point: some people really are toxic in politics. Pedophile advocates are in that category. Do you think we liberals want them near us? Support for people that scummy would lose us far more votes than such would get us. If you are a conservative, then you would be wise to treat neo-Nazis who advocate at the most charitable a sort of Apartheid but suggest to me through their symbols and rhetoric the will to do mass murder, perhaps with some forced labor to wear people down first. 

Need I remind you that Ronald Reagan, he of undeniable conservative credentials, expressed unqualified disdain for Klansmen and neo-Nazis while President when those creeps emerged from the gutter? We have had mass killings, and Trump never took on the core beliefs that underpin neo-Nazi ideology. Nazis killed, and so have neo-Nazis.

[Classic-Xer]

(11-13-2020, 12:51 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(11-11-2020, 10:42 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(11-11-2020, 09:14 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Who cares? Biden won. So, what's so great about Bumbling Biden? I didn't see anything great about Biden. So, what do you know about Biden? Was Biden ever great? Well, I have to say is he better be great because that's what the Democrats are going to keep the country and fulfill all of its obligations or find themselves being depleted and directly competing with America itself. We're going to win dude because nature always wins.

They said much the same of the governor of New York, FDR.  The reason FDR got elected in as decisive an election as Biden was because their predecessors went with the old values and did not address the primary problem the culture was facing.  Not a good idea in a crisis.  Yet, Hoover thought he shouldn’t try to regulate the economy or find jobs, and Trump aligned against solving the bug and racist violent policing.  For that matter, Buchanan was all in favor of slavery.

I figure that the time makes the man, not the other way around.  In a crisis the old values fail and are dumped on, but that cannot happen until they and the new values have been debated and a bad president who tries to implement the old values after their time is passing, and shows their weakness and failure.  At that point the grey champion steps in and oversees the new values.  He later gets the credit associated, perhaps not fully deserved.

I would not have picked Biden either, but right now he is set up in a good place.

Joe Biden will at the least recover some of the social virtues of the recent past, virtues that Donald Trump brushed off. Maybe he gets a chance to start anew what Obama started and take it further into real progress for more Americans. 

He has said that he wants to earn the trust of people who did not vote for him, and that will take not doing something that Donald Trump did to us: Trump stuck it to those who voted against him. To be sure there are toxic people, typically extremists, who demand what a sane leadership can never offer. Trump acted as if the fascistic Alt Right was a constituency worth cultivating. Such people are nothing but trouble. If a politician wants to cultivate people as a new part of the base, then seeking the votes of people whom the Other Side has taken for granted for decades but don't offend one's moral values is a good idea. That is how Dwight Eisenhower won over the Mormons. Don't fool yourself; we Democrats would love to have them on our side in partisan politics again. The Alt Right? Marxist-Leninists? Neo-Nazis? The Klan? Pedophilia advocates? They can get lost.

It's hard to see what the Republican Party has to offer unless it can sell out the ideology of Donald Trump. There will be a need for a Loyal Opposition.

How are you going to tell the Marxist-Leninist's to get lost at this point? What was Bernies average percentage of the Democratic electorate? What about the Social Justice Warriors ( the Obamacrats/Third Worlders, Black Lives Matter, Antifa and so forth) ? They're starting to get pretty powerful/dangerous these days too? How are you going to tell them to get lost at this point? We can tell them to get lost but how can you?

[Classic-Xer]

(11-13-2020, 10:37 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(11-13-2020, 09:21 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(11-13-2020, 12:51 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(11-11-2020, 10:42 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(11-11-2020, 09:14 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Who cares? Biden won. So, what's so great about Bumbling Biden? I didn't see anything great about Biden. So, what do you know about Biden? Was Biden ever great? Well, I have to say is he better be great because that's what the Democrats are going to keep the country and fulfill all of its obligations or find themselves being depleted and directly competing with America itself. We're going to win dude because nature always wins.

They said much the same of the governor of New York, FDR.  The reason FDR got elected in as decisive an election as Biden was because their predecessors went with the old values and did not address the primary problem the culture was facing.  Not a good idea in a crisis.  Yet, Hoover thought he shouldn’t try to regulate the economy or find jobs, and Trump aligned against solving the bug and racist violent policing.  For that matter, Buchanan was all in favor of slavery.

I figure that the time makes the man, not the other way around.  In a crisis the old values fail and are dumped on, but that cannot happen until they and the new values have been debated and a bad president who tries to implement the old values after their time is passing, and shows their weakness and failure.  At that point the grey champion steps in and oversees the new values.  He later gets the credit associated, perhaps not fully deserved.

I would not have picked Biden either, but right now he is set up in a good place.

Joe Biden will at the least recover some of the social virtues of the recent past, virtues that Donald Trump brushed off. Maybe he gets a chance to start anew what Obama started and take it further into real progress for more Americans. 

He has said that he wants to earn the trust of people who did not vote for him, and that will take not doing something that Donald Trump did to us: Trump stuck it to those who voted against him. To be sure there are toxic people, typically extremists, who demand what a sane leadership can never offer. Trump acted as if the fascistic Alt Right was a constituency worth cultivating. Such people are nothing but trouble. If a politician wants to cultivate people as a new part of the base, then seeking the votes of people whom the Other Side has taken for granted for decades but don't offend one's moral values is a good idea. That is how Dwight Eisenhower won over the Mormons. Don't fool yourself; we Democrats would love to have them on our side in partisan politics again. The Alt Right? Marxist-Leninists? Neo-Nazis? The Klan? Pedophilia advocates? They can get lost.

It's hard to see what the Republican Party has to offer unless it can sell out the ideology of Donald Trump. There will be a need for a Loyal Opposition.

What social virtues are you talking about? How is he going to earn the trust of the Trump supporters? Is he going to take on China? Is he going to put America First and piss off half his donors? The dude is a sell out you know and if you didn't know that then you heard it from me first.

For one thing, the Constitution is far more important than the will of the President. 

Maybe you neglect something. Utah was a solid D state during the New Deal Era. As late as 1948 it was more Democratic than the US as a whole, boing nearly 54-45 for Harry Truman in the 1948 Presidential election.  Until then it went D except in R landslides. Apparently R pols nationwide were slow to allow statehood to Utah. After 50 years that was no longer relevant, and Eisenhower found that he could appeal to the Mormon hierarchy in Utah to win it over. Oh, did he win it over! Only in the 1964 disaster of Barry Goldwater has it since voted for a Democratic nominee for President. 

I may not like Mormon theology, but Mormons aren't bad people. The social order that they have established in Utah is a social order that closely imitates liberal norms and gets good results. That Mormons do not drink or smoke keeps a big chunk of the government from being devoured in the treatment of smoking-related and alcohol-related pathologies  that prove expensive and difficult (if not futile) to treat. So Utah does fairly well at social welfare -- like a typical Blue state.  

I'm a Democrat. I would love to have Mormons on my political side. They wouldn't be trouble. I contrast them to some loathsome people that Donald Trump cultivated as if they could make a difference in the election: neo-Nazis. I hate them. They are a disgrace to a big part of my ancestry (German -- and German-Americans think of Nazis about like most Italian-Americans think of the Mafia). If I had to choose between being a Nazi and a Jew I would be a Jew, for such would cause me no fewer compromises of my ethical and cultural values. (In case you think that German-American families in rural  America listen to much Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt,  Schubert, Schumann, Bruckner, and Brahms, then you are wrong. It's mostly country music for adults and a surprising amount of rap (which I would not dignify with the description "music") among youth. Yuck!   

But back to the point: some people really are toxic in politics. Pedophile advocates are in that category. Do you think we liberals want them near us? Support for people that scummy would lose us far more votes than such would get us. If you are a conservative, then you would be wise to treat neo-Nazis who advocate at the most charitable a sort of Apartheid but suggest to me through their symbols and rhetoric the will to do mass murder, perhaps with some forced labor to wear people down first. 

Need I remind you that Ronald Reagan, he of undeniable conservative credentials, expressed unqualified disdain for Klansmen and neo-Nazis while President when those creeps emerged from the gutter? We have had mass killings, and Trump never took on the core beliefs that underpin neo-Nazi ideology. Nazis killed, and so have neo-Nazis.

Dude, your side has already trashed the Constitution. It's just not official yet. Your side needs the Constitution to go away. Like I said, you can give up your rights and accept whatever the Democrats have to offer in exchange. You are free to do that right now by accepting welfare and you expressed you're willingness to do so with your Second Amendment Right. Once that's gone then taking away the rest will be rather easy.

[Eric the Green]

(11-13-2020, 11:50 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(11-13-2020, 10:37 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(11-13-2020, 09:21 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(11-13-2020, 12:51 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(11-11-2020, 10:42 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: They said much the same of the governor of New York, FDR.  The reason FDR got elected in as decisive an election as Biden was because their predecessors went with the old values and did not address the primary problem the culture was facing.  Not a good idea in a crisis.  Yet, Hoover thought he shouldn’t try to regulate the economy or find jobs, and Trump aligned against solving the bug and racist violent policing.  For that matter, Buchanan was all in favor of slavery.

I figure that the time makes the man, not the other way around.  In a crisis the old values fail and are dumped on, but that cannot happen until they and the new values have been debated and a bad president who tries to implement the old values after their time is passing, and shows their weakness and failure.  At that point the grey champion steps in and oversees the new values.  He later gets the credit associated, perhaps not fully deserved.

I would not have picked Biden either, but right now he is set up in a good place.

Joe Biden will at the least recover some of the social virtues of the recent past, virtues that Donald Trump brushed off. Maybe he gets a chance to start anew what Obama started and take it further into real progress for more Americans. 

He has said that he wants to earn the trust of people who did not vote for him, and that will take not doing something that Donald Trump did to us: Trump stuck it to those who voted against him. To be sure there are toxic people, typically extremists, who demand what a sane leadership can never offer. Trump acted as if the fascistic Alt Right was a constituency worth cultivating. Such people are nothing but trouble. If a politician wants to cultivate people as a new part of the base, then seeking the votes of people whom the Other Side has taken for granted for decades but don't offend one's moral values is a good idea. That is how Dwight Eisenhower won over the Mormons. Don't fool yourself; we Democrats would love to have them on our side in partisan politics again. The Alt Right? Marxist-Leninists? Neo-Nazis? The Klan? Pedophilia advocates? They can get lost.

It's hard to see what the Republican Party has to offer unless it can sell out the ideology of Donald Trump. There will be a need for a Loyal Opposition.

What social virtues are you talking about? How is he going to earn the trust of the Trump supporters? Is he going to take on China? Is he going to put America First and piss off half his donors? The dude is a sell out you know and if you didn't know that then you heard it from me first.

For one thing, the Constitution is far more important than the will of the President. 

Maybe you neglect something. Utah was a solid D state during the New Deal Era. As late as 1948 it was more Democratic than the US as a whole, boing nearly 54-45 for Harry Truman in the 1948 Presidential election.  Until then it went D except in R landslides. Apparently R pols nationwide were slow to allow statehood to Utah. After 50 years that was no longer relevant, and Eisenhower found that he could appeal to the Mormon hierarchy in Utah to win it over. Oh, did he win it over! Only in the 1964 disaster of Barry Goldwater has it since voted for a Democratic nominee for President. 

I may not like Mormon theology, but Mormons aren't bad people. The social order that they have established in Utah is a social order that closely imitates liberal norms and gets good results. That Mormons do not drink or smoke keeps a big chunk of the government from being devoured in the treatment of smoking-related and alcohol-related pathologies  that prove expensive and difficult (if not futile) to treat. So Utah does fairly well at social welfare -- like a typical Blue state.  

I'm a Democrat. I would love to have Mormons on my political side. They wouldn't be trouble. I contrast them to some loathsome people that Donald Trump cultivated as if they could make a difference in the election: neo-Nazis. I hate them. They are a disgrace to a big part of my ancestry (German -- and German-Americans think of Nazis about like most Italian-Americans think of the Mafia). If I had to choose between being a Nazi and a Jew I would be a Jew, for such would cause me no fewer compromises of my ethical and cultural values. (In case you think that German-American families in rural  America listen to much Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt,  Schubert, Schumann, Bruckner, and Brahms, then you are wrong. It's mostly country music for adults and a surprising amount of rap (which I would not dignify with the description "music") among youth. Yuck!   

But back to the point: some people really are toxic in politics. Pedophile advocates are in that category. Do you think we liberals want them near us? Support for people that scummy would lose us far more votes than such would get us. If you are a conservative, then you would be wise to treat neo-Nazis who advocate at the most charitable a sort of Apartheid but suggest to me through their symbols and rhetoric the will to do mass murder, perhaps with some forced labor to wear people down first. 

Need I remind you that Ronald Reagan, he of undeniable conservative credentials, expressed unqualified disdain for Klansmen and neo-Nazis while President when those creeps emerged from the gutter? We have had mass killings, and Trump never took on the core beliefs that underpin neo-Nazi ideology. Nazis killed, and so have neo-Nazis.

Dude, your side has already trashed the Constitution. It's just not official yet. Your side needs the Constitution to go away. Like I said, you can give up your rights and accept whatever the Democrats have to offer in exchange. You are free to do that right now by accepting welfare and you expressed you're willingness to do so with your Second Amendment Right. Once that's gone then taking away the rest will be rather easy.

The "rights" you are concerned about is the right for goons to go out on the street or invade vote counting centers and threaten people with automatic weapons, or just massacre people. Your version of "rights" are not those that any sensible person should recognize as rights.

[Eric the Green]

(11-13-2020, 10:23 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Self reliance means what it means. If you don't know and understand what it means then look it up in a dictionary. Have you ever been self reliant?

I'm sure you will be self-reliant when a huge flood sweeps through your ex-urb and wipes out your house and your entire neighborhood, and see you not ask for help from FEMA but just be a "self-reliant" homeless person. And by the way, try being "self-reliant" and just breathe in air and never have to breathe out. Or vice versa. And "self-reliant" when that air makes you sick from acid rain because your self-reliant philosophy has shut down the Environmental Protection Agency that restrains your "self-reliant" oil barons from polluting our air.

[Eric the Green]

The electoral vote decided.



Current popular vote:

Biden
50.9%
78,114,089

Donald Trump
47.4%
72,741,954

[pbrower2a]

(11-13-2020, 11:50 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(11-13-2020, 10:37 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(11-13-2020, 09:21 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(11-13-2020, 12:51 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(11-11-2020, 10:42 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: They said much the same of the governor of New York, FDR.  The reason FDR got elected in as decisive an election as Biden was because their predecessors went with the old values and did not address the primary problem the culture was facing.  Not a good idea in a crisis.  Yet, Hoover thought he shouldn’t try to regulate the economy or find jobs, and Trump aligned against solving the bug and racist violent policing.  For that matter, Buchanan was all in favor of slavery.

I figure that the time makes the man, not the other way around.  In a crisis the old values fail and are dumped on, but that cannot happen until they and the new values have been debated and a bad president who tries to implement the old values after their time is passing, and shows their weakness and failure.  At that point the grey champion steps in and oversees the new values.  He later gets the credit associated, perhaps not fully deserved.

I would not have picked Biden either, but right now he is set up in a good place.

Joe Biden will at the least recover some of the social virtues of the recent past, virtues that Donald Trump brushed off. Maybe he gets a chance to start anew what Obama started and take it further into real progress for more Americans. 

He has said that he wants to earn the trust of people who did not vote for him, and that will take not doing something that Donald Trump did to us: Trump stuck it to those who voted against him. To be sure there are toxic people, typically extremists, who demand what a sane leadership can never offer. Trump acted as if the fascistic Alt Right was a constituency worth cultivating. Such people are nothing but trouble. If a politician wants to cultivate people as a new part of the base, then seeking the votes of people whom the Other Side has taken for granted for decades but don't offend one's moral values is a good idea. That is how Dwight Eisenhower won over the Mormons. Don't fool yourself; we Democrats would love to have them on our side in partisan politics again. The Alt Right? Marxist-Leninists? Neo-Nazis? The Klan? Pedophilia advocates? They can get lost.

It's hard to see what the Republican Party has to offer unless it can sell out the ideology of Donald Trump. There will be a need for a Loyal Opposition.

What social virtues are you talking about? How is he going to earn the trust of the Trump supporters? Is he going to take on China? Is he going to put America First and piss off half his donors? The dude is a sell out you know and if you didn't know that then you heard it from me first.

For one thing, the Constitution is far more important than the will of the President. 

Maybe you neglect something. Utah was a solid D state during the New Deal Era. As late as 1948 it was more Democratic than the US as a whole, boing nearly 54-45 for Harry Truman in the 1948 Presidential election.  Until then it went D except in R landslides. Apparently R pols nationwide were slow to allow statehood to Utah. After 50 years that was no longer relevant, and Eisenhower found that he could appeal to the Mormon hierarchy in Utah to win it over. Oh, did he win it over! Only in the 1964 disaster of Barry Goldwater has it since voted for a Democratic nominee for President. 

I may not like Mormon theology, but Mormons aren't bad people. The social order that they have established in Utah is a social order that closely imitates liberal norms and gets good results. That Mormons do not drink or smoke keeps a big chunk of the government from being devoured in the treatment of smoking-related and alcohol-related pathologies  that prove expensive and difficult (if not futile) to treat. So Utah does fairly well at social welfare -- like a typical Blue state.  

I'm a Democrat. I would love to have Mormons on my political side. They wouldn't be trouble. I contrast them to some loathsome people that Donald Trump cultivated as if they could make a difference in the election: neo-Nazis. I hate them. They are a disgrace to a big part of my ancestry (German -- and German-Americans think of Nazis about like most Italian-Americans think of the Mafia). If I had to choose between being a Nazi and a Jew I would be a Jew, for such would cause me no fewer compromises of my ethical and cultural values. (In case you think that German-American families in rural  America listen to much Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt,  Schubert, Schumann, Bruckner, and Brahms, then you are wrong. It's mostly country music for adults and a surprising amount of rap (which I would not dignify with the description "music") among youth. Yuck!   

But back to the point: some people really are toxic in politics. Pedophile advocates are in that category. Do you think we liberals want them near us? Support for people that scummy would lose us far more votes than such would get us. If you are a conservative, then you would be wise to treat neo-Nazis who advocate at the most charitable a sort of Apartheid but suggest to me through their symbols and rhetoric the will to do mass murder, perhaps with some forced labor to wear people down first. 

Need I remind you that Ronald Reagan, he of undeniable conservative credentials, expressed unqualified disdain for Klansmen and neo-Nazis while President when those creeps emerged from the gutter? We have had mass killings, and Trump never took on the core beliefs that underpin neo-Nazi ideology. Nazis killed, and so have neo-Nazis.

Dude, your side has already trashed the Constitution. It's just not official yet. Your side needs the Constitution to go away. Like I said, you can give up your rights and accept whatever the Democrats have to offer in exchange. You are free to do that right now by accepting welfare and you expressed you're willingness to do so with your Second Amendment Right. Once that's gone then taking away the rest will be rather easy.

This was done:



to make this sacrilegious stunt



possible. Donald Trump does not attend this Episcopal church, and that particular church did not give the President permission for this infamous photo-op. Even worse, I see no evidence from the behavior of this hideous person that he reads or heeds the ethical guidance in the Bible. This stunt has been condemned by mainline Protestant churches and the Catholic Church. 

I got to choose between a devout Christian and a Santa Claus-and-Easter Bunny Christian. I can say that this time (it has never been a real choice) that I voted for the Christian. Joe Biden will restore Christian ethics and behavior to the White House. (He will appoint some Jews, but Jewish ethics are indistinguishable from Christian ethics. No more 'grab 'em by the (kitty-cat)' stuff. No more bragging that he could go down Fifth Avenue and shoot people and he wouldn't lose any votes stuff. No more highly-politicized attacks on dissidents. 

I also got to choose between a President who has a healthy reverence for America's soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines who have accepted the danger, hardship, and regimentation of military life on behalf of the American people now and in all prior wars and one who could say "I prefer heroes who weren't captured". That pointless swipe at Senator John McCain (R-AZ) likely cost him the eleven electoral votes of Arizona. I see no obvious cause for expecting any difference between Joe Biden and the President (Barack Obama) for whom he was an understudy on that.  

I got to choose between a President who sides with dictators or with democratic leaders. It has never been so easy. 

I got to choose between a President who recognizes the usefulness of science even if it is politically inconvenient to someone who subordinates science to the will of his favored (high-polluting) special interests. It was easy. 

Joe Biden. Devout Christian. Good family man. No corrupt gain in his life. No string of sexual harassment. Respects active-duty service personnel and veterans. Trusts science more than gut feelings. Appeals to the best in human nature. It's easy.

[David Horn]

(11-13-2020, 11:03 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: How are you going to tell the Marxist-Leninist's to get lost at this point? What was Bernies average percentage of the Democratic electorate? What about the Social Justice Warriors ( the Obamacrats/Third Worlders, Black Lives Matter, Antifa and so forth) ? They're starting to get pretty powerful/dangerous these days too? How are you going to tell them to get lost at this point? We can tell them to get lost but how can you?

What is it with you guys and all the Marxist rhetoric?  No one, and I do mean no one, is interested in that economic system,  And Leninism? Really.  That's just dictatorship with pseudo-populist propaganda -- a lot more like the Trumpster than anything the Dems are doing. I know it's worked in the past, but that may now be ending. The Millies and Zoomers are not listening.

And yes, there are a lot of social problems you don't see in your lily white enclave.  I get it.  My neighbors are just like you. But the minority can't lord it over the majority for very long, and the demographics are shifting pretty fast.  Bernie hit a nerve, because the pain was already there.  Trump didn't help ... he made it worse.  The zealots in the Democratic Party are no more zealous than the ones the GOP hugs everyday, and a lot less violent.  You might consider cleaning your own stables.

[pbrower2a]

(11-15-2020, 06:34 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(11-13-2020, 11:03 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: How are you going to tell the Marxist-Leninist's to get lost at this point? What was Bernies average percentage of the Democratic electorate? What about the Social Justice Warriors ( the Obamacrats/Third Worlders, Black Lives Matter, Antifa and so forth) ? They're starting to get pretty powerful/dangerous these days too? How are you going to tell them to get lost at this point? We can tell them to get lost but how can you?

What is it with you guys and all the Marxist rhetoric?  No one, and I do mean no one, is interested in that economic system,  And Leninism? Really.  That's just dictatorship with pseudo-populist propaganda -- a lot more like the Trumpster than anything the Dems are doing. I know it's worked in the past, but that may now be ending. The Millies and Zoomers are not listening.

Marxism-Leninism is such a failure that what passes as the Left has abandoned it. Marxism-Leninism is so obsolete that it is now reactionary. Government ownership and operation of all productive business is a failure. Central planning is a disaster. Free markets are far better than some administrators in deciding what is made and what it will cost the consumer. Monopolies such as power companies are starting to feel the pressure from such competition as solar and wind power. Cellular phone companies are gutting the revenues of the landline phone companies. 

...as for the Third World: West Virginia is one of the whitest states in America, and it is incredibly poor. If by "Third World" Classic X'er means "non-white", then much of the American middle class is non-white. Statistically, Americans of East, Southeast, and South Asian origin do better than white people. Although poverty may result from being where economic progress completely missed, it can also result from being in places in which what used to pass for prosperity is no more. A hint: if you want the Good Life in America, stay clear of the Ohio valley between Portsmouth, Ohio and Huntington, West Virginia (this includes Ashland, Kentucky). Don't go barefoot around there, for you might find some abandoned needles for IV drug use with your feet.

I'll say this for middle-class blacks and Hispanics: they at least give a damn about the poor of their ethnic groups. That's far better than I can say about middle-class and upper-class white people. OK, so if you live on the North Side of Chicago or in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan (a truly prosperous suburb of Detroit) you are a long way from eastern Kentucky or even southern Ohio.     

Quote: And yes, there are a lot of social problems you don't see in your lily white enclave.  I get it.  My neighbors are just like you. But the minority can't lord it over the majority for very long, and the demographics are shifting pretty fast.  Bernie hit a nerve, because the pain was already there.  Trump didn't help ... he made it worse.  The zealots in the Democratic Party are no more zealous than the ones the GOP hugs everyday, and a lot less violent.  You might consider cleaning your own stables.

I doubt that Classic X'er cares little for poor white people. He is not a racist in his contempt for the poor; he is an equal-opportunity debaser of poor people irrespective of their race or ethnicity. 

It's time for a new New Deal for America -- or a Marshall Plan for America's poor. Pick your slogan!

[Classic-Xer]

(11-15-2020, 06:34 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(11-13-2020, 11:03 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: How are you going to tell the Marxist-Leninist's to get lost at this point? What was Bernies average percentage of the Democratic electorate? What about the Social Justice Warriors ( the Obamacrats/Third Worlders, Black Lives Matter, Antifa and so forth) ? They're starting to get pretty powerful/dangerous these days too? How are you going to tell them to get lost at this point? We can tell them to get lost but how can you?

What is it with you guys and all the Marxist rhetoric?  No one, and I do mean no one, is interested in that economic system,  And Leninism? Really.  That's just dictatorship with pseudo-populist propaganda -- a lot more like the Trumpster than anything the Dems are doing. I know it's worked in the past, but that may now be ending. The Millies and Zoomers are not listening.

And yes, there are a lot of social problems you don't see in your lily white enclave.  I get it.  My neighbors are just like you. But the minority can't lord it over the majority for very long, and the demographics are shifting pretty fast.  Bernie hit a nerve, because the pain was already there.  Trump didn't help ... he made it worse.  The zealots in the Democratic Party are no more zealous than the ones the GOP hugs everyday, and a lot less violent.  You might consider cleaning your own stables.

You're not interested in the system that you've been more or less promoting/supporting/representing for as long as I've known you and the others here. I think you're right, I think the majority of the country favors American capitalism over lowly third world socialism. I think you're also right about the elites losing control over the American people as well. You're seeing signs of it now. Bernie hit a nerve but Trump hit a much larger nerve than Bernie. The Democratic zealots are going down. It's just a matter of how hard are they going down at this point. Biden is a sellout and that will be made very clear by the mid terms. The Democrats voted to go backwards which is fine for Democrats these days.

[Bob Butler 54]

(11-16-2020, 02:22 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: You're not interested in the system that you've been more or less promoting/supporting/representing for as long as I've known you and the others here. I think you're right, I think the majority of the country favors American capitalism over lowly third world socialism. I think you're also right about the elites losing control over the American people as well. You're seeing signs of it now. Bernie hit a nerve but Trump hit a much larger nerve than Bernie. The Democratic zealots are going down. It's just a matter of how hard are they going down at this point. Biden is a sellout and that will be made very clear by the mid terms. The Democrats voted to go backwards which is fine for Democrats these days.

If people are living close together, it is natural that they want to help each other.  If they are spread way out, they have to become more self reliant, do a greater number of things themselves.  Neither is evil.  Neither is the correct solution for all circumstances, for all environments.

The crime is in thinking other people living under different circumstances should be forced to do what you do.

Any attempt to help your neighbor, to cooperate, to work together, has come to be called socialism.  Ben Franklin in that case was a big socialist.  He thought it was neat for a bunch of well to do merchants to get together and pave the road, or to get them together to form a postal service.  The idea was to create a more perfect union.  More recently it is called domestic spending.  The government tries to help the people... or not as the case might be.

Some people just are not team players.  It’s about themselves, they don’t need support from anybody.  Well, bully for them.  They just shouldn’t get in the way of those who do want to work together, or to be good at one thing and let others do what they are good at.

I picture a culture of independence where everybody is supposed to learn how to fix their own air conditioner.  I’d rather not, myself.  I’ll just call in a guy who specializes in fixing air conditioners.  Classic just seems incapable of understanding the principle.

Edit:  Now, if all air conditioners were owned by the state, and that by law you could not fix your own air conditioner or others except by being a member of the party's official air conditioning bureaucracy, and that only the sons of party bureaucrats seemed ever to become members, and if you were illegally caught fixing an air conditioner you got exiled to some ridiculous cold place, now then you are getting into the sort of abuse which gave socialism a bad name among certain people.  That doesn't seem to be the case here.

[Einzige]

As an actual Marxist, I see very little difference between the platforms of the Democratic Party and the Republicans. Both are ultra-capitalist, ultranationalist parties of the bourgeois and their bootlickers among the privileged sectors of the working class (the"middle-class", whose own relationship to the means of production is identical to the lowliest Third World laborer). Bill Clinton created the Imigration And Customs Enforcement agency weaponized by Trump with the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996; Barack Obama was the Deporter-in-Chief. These parties are structurally and functionally identical.

Welfare programs, for example, are simply designed to facilitate the increased circulation of money. That's all. They are the products of a particular bourgeois economic theory which holds that economic crises are the product of under consumption (ironically, the same theory underpinning Republican supply side economics), which can be overcome endogenously without changes to the mode of production. "Crony capitalism" issimply capitalism which prioritizes the circulation of money to competition; it isn't some radically new mode of production.

The Green New Deal on the socdem Left is another example. It's nothing more than an attempt to solve a capitalist problem capitalistically- to heal Marx's "metabolic rift" with nature and perhaps to induce a Keynesian knock on effect in the process. There is absolutely nothing revolutionary, or even radical, in any of AOC's proposals towards this end. Green capitalism is garbage.

[Bob Butler 54]

(11-17-2020, 02:15 PM)Einzige Wrote: As an actual Marxist, I see very little difference between the platforms of the Democratic Party and the Republicans. Both are ultra-capitalist, ultranationalist parties of the bourgeois and their bootlickers among the privileged sectors of the working class (the"middle-class", whose own relationship to the means of production is identical to the lowliest Third World laborer). Bill Clinton created the Imigration And Customs Enforcement agency weaponized by Trump with the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996; Barack Obama was the Deporter-in-Chief. These parties are structurally and functionally identical.

Welfare programs, for example, are simply designed to facilitate the increased circulation of money. That's all. They are the products of a particular bourgeois economic theory which holds that economic crises are the product of under consumption (ironically, the same theory underpinning Republican supply side economics), which can be overcome endogenously without changes to the mode of production. "Crony capitalism" issimply capitalism which prioritizes the circulation of money to competition; it isn't some radically new mode of production.

The Green New Deal on the socdem Left is another example. It's nothing more than an attempt to solve a capitalist problem capitalistically- to heal Marx's "metabolic rift" with nature and perhaps to induce a Keynesian knock on effect in the process. There is absolutely nothing revolutionary, or even radical, in any of AOC's proposals towards this end. Green capitalism is garbage.

At the height of the unravelling, I could go with that analysis.  Both parties were more loyal to the elites than to the working man.  These days, things have shifted a little bit.  It is more that the Republicans are loyal to the elites and racists, the Democrats to the working man and minorities.  It seems possible that the conflict can be resolved through votes and legislation rather than violence.

The problem with Marxism is that the party becomes the new elites.  They own the means of production.  In all attempts a Marxism to date, the revolutionaries come to care more about the revolutionaries than the people.  As a result, the Marxist economies are unable to compete with the capitalists.  Until that problem is solved, Marxism is a non starter.

That leaves us trying capitalist problems using capitalist methods.  They may not be radical, but they have not historically failed enough that socialism has become a dirty word.

[Einzige]

(11-17-2020, 02:37 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(11-17-2020, 02:15 PM)Einzige Wrote: As an actual Marxist, I see very little difference between the platforms of the Democratic Party and the Republicans. Both are ultra-capitalist, ultranationalist parties of the bourgeois and their bootlickers among the privileged sectors of the working class (the"middle-class", whose own relationship to the means of production is identical to the lowliest Third World laborer). Bill Clinton created the Imigration And Customs Enforcement agency weaponized by Trump with the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996; Barack Obama was the Deporter-in-Chief. These parties are structurally and functionally identical.

Welfare programs, for example, are simply designed to facilitate the increased circulation of money. That's all. They are the products of a particular bourgeois economic theory which holds that economic crises are the product of under consumption (ironically, the same theory underpinning Republican supply side economics), which can be overcome endogenously without changes to the mode of production. "Crony capitalism" issimply capitalism which prioritizes the circulation of money to competition; it isn't some radically new mode of production.

The Green New Deal on the socdem Left is another example. It's nothing more than an attempt to solve a capitalist problem capitalistically- to heal Marx's "metabolic rift" with nature and perhaps to induce a Keynesian knock on effect in the process. There is absolutely nothing revolutionary, or even radical, in any of AOC's proposals towards this end. Green capitalism is garbage.

At the height of the unravelling, I could go with that analysis.  Both parties were more loyal to the elites than to the working man.  These days, things have shifted a little bit.  It is more that the Republicans are loyal to the elites and racists, the Democrats to the working man and minorities.  It seems possible that the conflict can be resolved through votes and legislation rather than violence.

The Democratic Party is not "loyal to the working man", lol. Even from a vulgar left-populist position (laborite capitalism - pro-unions, pro-welfare, etc.) the Democrats are loyal to specific segments of the working class- workers in the tech sector and finance, the actual Democratic base.

In reality, social democratic demands like "loyalty to the working class" are useless. What is necessary is nothing less than the self-abolition of the working class as a class.

Unions are useless in this struggle, indeed counterrevolutionary. Per Professor Paul Mattick:


https://www.marxists.org/archive/mattick.../lebel.htm

Quote: Although the continued existence of capitalism, in either its private or state-capitalist forms, proved that the expectation of the growth of a new labour movement in the wake of the Second World War was pre mature, the continued resilience of capitalism does not remove its immanent contradictions and will therefore not release the workers from the need to put an end to it. Of course, with capitalism still in the saddle, the old labour organisations, parliamentary parties and trade unions, could also be maintained. But they are already recognised, and recognise themselves, as part and parcel of capitalism, destined to go down with the system on which their existence depends.

Quote:The problem with Marxism is that the party becomes the new elites.  They own the means of production.  In all attempts a Marxism to date, the revolutionaries come to care more about the revolutionaries than the people.  As a result, the Marxist economies are unable to compete with the capitalists.  Until that problem is solved, Marxism is a non starter.

The revolution does not require a formalized Party at all. I would suggest studying Amadeo Bordiga's views on the matter.

[pbrower2a]

(11-17-2020, 02:15 PM)Einzige Wrote: As an actual Marxist, I see very little difference between the platforms of the Democratic Party and the Republicans. Both are ultra-capitalist, ultranationalist parties of the bourgeois and their bootlickers among the privileged sectors of the working class (the"middle-class", whose own relationship to the means of production is identical to the lowliest Third World laborer). Bill Clinton created the Imigration And Customs Enforcement agency weaponized by Trump with the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996; Barack Obama was the Deporter-in-Chief. These parties are structurally and functionally identical.

As a practical matter, I reject the concept of proletarian revolution because it has never worked well. The dictatorial regimes that replace the predecessors (exclusion: Nazi Germany) prove just as dictatorial and despotic as the nasty regimes that they replaces. Marxist socialism is simply the imposition of state ownership of the productive capital, and that proves simply a newfangled form of feudalism. Markets are much more rational than is central planning because markets take the human part out of decision-making of what gets made and what gets offered. The human part in central planning is often simply foolishness, making a surfeit of what is obsolete or substandard because such is easier than responding to consumer demand. "Socialist" economies have proved backward in technological innovation (think of the old East German version of 'high tech') except in military equipment (the Drug Enforcement Agency bought some MIGs for surveillance aircraft, and after overthrowing Saddam Hussein the US bought plenty of AK-47's of Soviet design for the new Iraq). 

In the wake of a revolution that overthrows a thoroughly-nasty, corrupt, non-market system (despots of the Right and Left are equally hostile to free markets, at the least free markets in ideas), it is best to go full-bore free market. After that we need capitalism with a human face. American capitalism has been trending toward monopolization (destruction of competition), vertical integration (denial of small-business opportunity) and bureaucratic elites within corporate behemoths. The worst trend in America is that toward a capitalist version of a Soviet-style nomenklatura in an executive class that gets well rewarded for treating people badly.         

Quote:Welfare programs, for example, are simply designed to facilitate the increased circulation of money. That's all. They are the products of a particular bourgeois economic theory which holds that economic crises are the product of under consumption (ironically, the same theory underpinning Republican supply side economics), which can be overcome endogenously without changes to the mode of production. "Crony capitalism" is simply capitalism which prioritizes the circulation of money to competition; it isn't some radically new mode of production.

I concur on the effect of strengthening the flow of transactions. People who use food aid (SNAP, earlier food stamps) typically spend the aid in entities such as Wal*Mart, Safeway, Kroger, Meijer, Publix, Spartan-Nash, Aldi, Family Dollar, and Dollar General.  I can easily imagine worse either as starvation or poor people such as the handicapped either starving or becoming great burdens on people who have better things to do. One pays one way or the other. Medicaid and Medicate go through medical providers.  But this is not crony capitalism in which a select few capitalists, often real estate developers who quickly become rentier landlords making a killing (this is where Donald Trump made his only reliable income), get the aid of the Government in deciding who gets to build what and where. Government deciding which capitalists make the money is crony capitalism, which is not a market-based economy.   

Quote:The Green New Deal on the socdem Left is another example. It's nothing more than an attempt to solve a capitalist problem capitalistically- to heal Marx's "metabolic rift" with nature and perhaps to induce a Keynesian knock on effect in the process. There is absolutely nothing revolutionary, or even radical, in any of AOC's proposals towards this end. Green capitalism is garbage.

We have all seen Donald Trump in action, and the only mitigation of his proposed nastiness is his incompetence as a political leader. The democratic elements within our political culture align with humanist tendencies (and when all is said and done, humanism is the only viable ideology) favor a more humane social order and one that better accommodates environmental reality.

[Einzige]

(11-17-2020, 02:55 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(11-17-2020, 02:15 PM)Einzige Wrote: As an actual Marxist, I see very little difference between the platforms of the Democratic Party and the Republicans. Both are ultra-capitalist, ultranationalist parties of the bourgeois and their bootlickers among the privileged sectors of the working class (the"middle-class", whose own relationship to the means of production is identical to the lowliest Third World laborer). Bill Clinton created the Imigration And Customs Enforcement agency weaponized by Trump with the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996; Barack Obama was the Deporter-in-Chief. These parties are structurally and functionally identical.

As a practical matter, I reject the concept of proletarian revolution because it has never worked well. The dictatorial regimes that replace the predecessors (exclusion: Nazi Germany) prove just as dictatorial and despotic as the nasty regimes that they replaces.

Yes, Communism will be totalitarian - just as capitalism is today. You cannot exist outside of capitalist relations today; there is no way to achieve independence from money relations, no matter how skilled the individual may be (even survivalists must buy their land, pay property taxes, buy tools, etc, all to encourage them to remain in the system.). Capitalism as a mode of production is all-encompassing now. So Communism will be also.

Quote:Marxist socialism is simply the imposition of state ownership of the productive capital, and that proves simply a newfangled form of feudalism.

Wrong. Read Engels' Socialism: Utopian & Scientific Chapter III:

Quote:If the crises demonstrate the incapacity of the bourgeoisie for managing any longer modern productive forces, the transformation of the great establishments for production and distribution into joint-stock companies, trusts, and State property, show how unnecessary the bourgeoisie are for that purpose. All the social functions of the capitalist has no further social function than that of pocketing dividends, tearing off coupons, and gambling on the Stock Exchange, where the different capitalists despoil one another of their capital. At first, the capitalistic mode of production forces out the workers. Now, it forces out the capitalists, and reduces them, just as it reduced the workers, to the ranks of the surplus-population, although not immediately into those of the industrial reserve army.

But, the transformation — either into joint-stock companies and trusts, or into State-ownership — does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces. In the joint-stock companies and trusts, this is obvious. And the modern State, again, is only the organization that bourgeois society takes on in order to support the external conditions of the capitalist mode of production against the encroachments as well of the workers as of individual capitalists. The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine — the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers — proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is, rather, brought to a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State-ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution.

So what happened in the Soviet Union? It simply passed from feudalism into State capitalism, as even Lenin recognized.  Per The Tax In Kind.

Quote:While the revolution in Germany is still slow in “coming forth”, our task is to study the state capitalism of the Germans, to spare no effort in copying it and not shrink from adopting dictatorial methods to hasten the copying of Western culture by barbarian Russia, without hesitating to use barbarous methods in fighting barbarism. If there are anarchists and Left Soeialist-Revolutionaries (I recall offhand the speeches of Karelin and Ghe at the meeting of the Central Executive Committee) who indulge in Karelin-like reflections and say that it is unbecoming for us revolutionaries to “take lessons” from German imperialism, there is only one thing we can say in reply: the revolution that took these people seriously would perish irrevocably (and deservedly).

At present petty-bourgeois capitalism prevails in Russia, and it is one and the same road that leads from it to both large-scale state capitalism and to socialism, through one and the same intermediary station called “national accounting and control of production and distribution”.

Quote:Markets are much more rational than is central planning because markets take the human part out of decision-making of what gets made and what gets offered. The human part in central planning is often simply foolishness, making a surfeit of what is obsolete or substandard because such is easier than responding to consumer demand.

There is no central planning under socialism. There is social planning, in which the whole of society directs production for the whole of society, unmediated by bureaucracies or markets.

Quote:"Socialist" economies have proved backward in technological innovation (think of the old East German version of 'high tech') except in military equipment (the Drug Enforcement Agency bought some MIGs for surveillance aircraft, and after overthrowing Saddam Hussein the US bought plenty of AK-47's of Soviet design for the new Iraq).

There has never been a socialist economy.

More later.

[pbrower2a]

(11-17-2020, 03:18 PM)Einzige Wrote:

(11-17-2020, 02:55 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(11-17-2020, 02:15 PM)Einzige Wrote: As an actual Marxist, I see very little difference between the platforms of the Democratic Party and the Republicans. Both are ultra-capitalist, ultranationalist parties of the bourgeois and their bootlickers among the privileged sectors of the working class (the"middle-class", whose own relationship to the means of production is identical to the lowliest Third World laborer). Bill Clinton created the Imigration And Customs Enforcement agency weaponized by Trump with the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996; Barack Obama was the Deporter-in-Chief. These parties are structurally and functionally identical.

As a practical matter, I reject the concept of proletarian revolution because it has never worked well. The dictatorial regimes that replace the predecessors (exclusion: Nazi Germany) prove just as dictatorial and despotic as the nasty regimes that they replaces.

Yes, Communism will be totalitarian - just as capitalism is today. You cannot exist outside of capitalist relations today; there is no way to achieve independence from money relations, no matter how skilled the individual may be (even survivalists must buy their land, pay property taxes, buy tools, etc, all to encourage them to remain in the system.). Capitalism as a mode of production is all-encompassing now. So Communism will be also.

Only if you confuse "totalitarian" with "inhuman" or "anti-human". A capitalist system with a leader at all dictatorial (as in Pinochet or Trump) will be inhuman to the extent that it holds that that those who own and administer the assets have no responsibility to the common man, but instead that the common man knows no restraints on the responsibility to the economic elites.  Pinochet is often suggested as an exemplar of market forces but he was the head of an order of extreme concentration of wealth and economic power. He destroyed democracy and stifled freedom of expression to protect the elites from all challenge. Trump is more neurotic and less organized, and the American economy has a larger small-business sector.
 

Quote:

Quote:Marxist socialism is simply the imposition of state ownership of the productive capital, and that proves simply a newfangled form of feudalism.

Wrong. Read Engels' Socialism: Utopian & Scientific Chapter III:

Quote:If the crises demonstrate the incapacity of the bourgeoisie for managing any longer modern productive forces, the transformation of the great establishments for production and distribution into joint-stock companies, trusts, and State property, show how unnecessary the bourgeoisie are for that purpose. All the social functions of the capitalist has no further social function than that of pocketing dividends, tearing off coupons, and gambling on the Stock Exchange, where the different capitalists despoil one another of their capital. At first, the capitalistic mode of production forces out the workers. Now, it forces out the capitalists, and reduces them, just as it reduced the workers, to the ranks of the surplus-population, although not immediately into those of the industrial reserve army.

But, the transformation — either into joint-stock companies and trusts, or into State-ownership — does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces. In the joint-stock companies and trusts, this is obvious. And the modern State, again, is only the organization that bourgeois society takes on in order to support the external conditions of the capitalist mode of production against the encroachments as well of the workers as of individual capitalists. The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine — the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers — proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is, rather, brought to a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State-ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution.

So what happened in the Soviet Union? It simply passed from feudalism into State capitalism, as even Lenin recognized.  Per The Tax In Kind.

Quote:While the revolution in Germany is still slow in “coming forth”, our task is to study the state capitalism of the Germans, to spare no effort in copying it and not shrink from adopting dictatorial methods to hasten the copying of Western culture by barbarian Russia, without hesitating to use barbarous methods in fighting barbarism. If there are anarchists and Left Soeialist-Revolutionaries (I recall offhand the speeches of Karelin and Ghe at the meeting of the Central Executive Committee) who indulge in Karelin-like reflections and say that it is unbecoming for us revolutionaries to “take lessons” from German imperialism, there is only one thing we can say in reply: the revolution that took these people seriously would perish irrevocably (and deservedly).

At present petty-bourgeois capitalism prevails in Russia, and it is one and the same road that leads from it to both large-scale state capitalism and to socialism, through one and the same intermediary station called “national accounting and control of production and distribution”.

Marxism-Leninism is already obsolete. The capitalists do not have a death wish, and they will do what they can to make a proletarian revolution impossible and even intellectually absurd. Capitalists do not need to be particularly humane to decide that hunger and homelessness are calls for revolution: better a welfare state. Capitalists generally have found that a consumer society is a better idea than a command society that serves only the interests of the owners and administrators. Engels as an authority? Contemporary mathematicians remain in awe of Euler and Gauss, but they don't look to the writings of those great geniuses for the mathematical questions of the day.    

Quote:

Quote:Markets are much more rational than is central planning because markets take the human part out of decision-making of what gets made and what gets offered. The human part in central planning is often simply foolishness, making a surfeit of what is obsolete or substandard because such is easier than responding to consumer demand.

There is no central planning under socialism. There is social planning, in which the whole of society directs production for the whole of society, unmediated by bureaucracies or markets.

Markets decide that obsolete technologies such as mainframe computers, pre-recorded VHS tapes, Windows 7 and earlier PC's, and CRT televisions are no longer made for mass consumption. We are beginning to see this even with dead-tree editions of books. Just go to Goodwill or Salvation Army stores to see what people used to cherish but don't now. (OK, one qualification: the thrift shops don't want obsolete TV's and computers). 

Quote: 

Quote:"Socialist" economies have proved backward in technological innovation (think of the old East German version of 'high tech') except in military equipment (the Drug Enforcement Agency bought some MIGs for surveillance aircraft, and after overthrowing Saddam Hussein the US bought plenty of AK-47's of Soviet design for the new Iraq).

There has never been a socialist economy.

More later.

Definitional dodge.

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(11-17-2020, 04:30 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Only if you confuse "totalitarian" with "inhuman" or "anti-human". A capitalist system with a leader at all dictatorial (as in Pinochet or Trump) will be inhuman to the extent that it holds that that those who own and administer the assets have no responsibility to the common man, but instead that the common man knows no restraints on the responsibility to the economic elites.  Pinochet is often suggested as an exemplar of market forces but he was the head of an order of extreme concentration of wealth and economic power. He destroyed democracy and stifled freedom of expression to protect the elites from all challenge. Trump is more neurotic and less organized, and the American economy has a larger small-business sector.

Capitalist systems do not have leaders. It is Capital itself which is a totalitarian social system, not this clique of bourgeois politicians or that. Just as we can imagine a revanchist, reactionary interwar Germany bot led by Hitler and the NSDAP but doing substantially the same things - perhaps with Hugenberg at the helm - so too can we imagine the system governed by different actors functioning near-identically (e.g. Herbert Hoover inaugurating the New Deal, or Jimmy Carter deregulating airlines, trucking etc. before Reagan).

Capital is the system; politics is its obfuscation
 

Quote:Engels as an authority

The point is that you are wrong to say that "Marxist socialism is simply the imposition of state ownership of the productive capital". That is rather (State) capitalism.