Trump hits new low in approval poll

[David Horn]

(01-27-2021, 09:07 PM)elect21 Wrote: Americans think that Trump is the problem, but the real problem is that Biden and Trump are both controlled by the Deep State.

No one sees this.

You really need to stop crawling around in QAnon message boards.  It's rotting your mind.  On the other hand, you may just need to get your meds adjusted.

[Eric the Green]

(01-28-2021, 06:09 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(01-27-2021, 09:07 PM)elect21 Wrote: Americans think that Trump is the problem, but the real problem is that Biden and Trump are both controlled by the Deep State.

No one sees this.

You really need to stop crawling around in QAnon message boards.  It's rotting your mind.  On the other hand, you may just need to get your meds adjusted.

I don't know what he's doing here. He doesn't even have an audience here. You'd think QAnon message boards or some other place like that would be more receptive.

[Einzige]

Biden and Trump are both controlled by Capital. They act in the interest of whatever faction of Capital they represent - even with the most "radical" proposed Democratic policies, e.g. the GND, the interests of Capital take precedence (the GND is an elaborate systems of subsidies and tariffs, not a program of nationalization and requisition, which might make a slight difference).

[Bob Butler 54]

(01-28-2021, 10:25 AM)Einzige Wrote: Biden and Trump are both controlled by Capital. They act in the interest of whatever faction of Capital they represent - even with the most "radical" proposed Democratic policies, e.g. the GND, the interests of Capital take precedence (the GND is an elaborate systems of subsidies and tariffs, not a program of nationalization and requisition, which might make a slight difference).

Let’s look at what might be the crisis issues.

COVID:  Yes, getting a valid vaccine guarantees profits.  Making enough PPE generates profits.  I don’t think for most people that is the most important motivations.  Compare it to grandma dying or finding a vaccine.  Family or scientific motivations are also important.

The economic fallout from COVID:  Yes.  In a way it is all about the all mighty dollar.  In a way, though, it is about your kids going hungry or not having a roof over their heads.

BLM:  There are other forms of oppression than economic.  While keeping the people oppressed does have a financial element, having the cops kill minorities is hardly an economic issue.

Red Violence:  Were the capitol rioters thinking of making big bucks?  Keeping someone you like in power is not primarily financial.

Honoring Science:  Should we let big lies permeate the culture.  Should we make policies which we know go against the science?  Yes, profits of big oil are involved, as is jobs in green industry.  No, the basic issue is basing decisions on what it real.

There are just a lot of ways of looking at this stuff.  Condensing it to one angle to look at all problems is oversimplification.

[Einzige]

(01-28-2021, 11:55 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(01-28-2021, 10:25 AM)Einzige Wrote: Biden and Trump are both controlled by Capital. They act in the interest of whatever faction of Capital they represent - even with the most "radical" proposed Democratic policies, e.g. the GND, the interests of Capital take precedence (the GND is an elaborate systems of subsidies and tariffs, not a program of nationalization and requisition, which might make a slight difference).

Let’s look at what might be the crisis issues.

COVID:  Yes, getting a valid vaccine guarantees profits.  Making enough PPE generates profits.  I don’t think for most people that is the most important motivations.  Compare it to grandma dying or finding a vaccine.  Family or scientific motivations are also important.

The economic fallout from COVID:  Yes.  In a way it is all about the all mighty dollar.  In a way, though, it is about your kids going hungry or not having a roof over their heads.

BLM:  There are other forms of oppression than economic.  While keeping the people oppressed does have a financial element, having the cops kill minorities is hardly an economic issue.

Red Violence:  Were the capitol rioters thinking of making big bucks?  Keeping someone you like in power is not primarily financial.

Honoring Science:  Should we let big lies permeate the culture.  Should we make policies which we know go against the science?  Yes, profits of big oil are involved, as is jobs in green industry.  No, the basic issue is basing decisions on what it real.

There are just a lot of ways of looking at this stuff.  Condensing it to one angle to look at all problems is oversimplification.

The oversimplification consists in the notion that issues of class and production are irrelevant and that simply shifting money around is the solution to these issues. At this point is isn't even a matter of mitigating climate change, for example, but of surviving it. The notion of Biden as a Green FDR is retarded.

What's going to happen is an environmental megadeth event. My expectation for the global population in fifty years is around two billion.

[pbrower2a]

(01-28-2021, 10:25 AM)Einzige Wrote: Biden and Trump are both controlled by Capital. They act in the interest of whatever faction of Capital they represent - even with the most "radical" proposed Democratic policies, e.g. the GND, the interests of Capital take precedence (the GND is an elaborate systems of subsidies and tariffs, not a program of nationalization and requisition, which might make a slight difference).

Capitalism is not going away in America. First of all, any social order will need capital to build anything from factories to roads to schools to hospitals to concert halls to military bases. No enterprise, public or private, can exist without it. Such is so whether the ideology is 'socialist' or aristocratic.  It took capital in Roman times to build the amphitheaters and aqueducts. The question between Marxist and bourgeois investment is who manages the capital. 

The acquisitive impulse is not all evil. Its antithesis is not so much socialism as it is laziness and apathy. Profits of the elite as the objective of the whole of Humanity or else death (whether quickly on the gallows or slowly through hunger and cold)... well, that is totalitarian as anything that Stalin or Mao could come up with. At the worst capitalist elites act as if no human suffering can ever be in excess so long as that suffering serves the privilege, indulgence, gain, or safety of the elites. 

It is possible that capitalism acted best when it had a real dread of a proletarian revolution and chose to entice workers with some level of comfort and delight with hope for improvement in their lives. Rewards for higher levels of performance, skill, and effort have a real pay back. Big Business is going to get it back as consumer purchases, so production simply increases. Hope for the future? The smart kid from a proletarian background might become a well-paid accountant, engineer, or research scientist because a good educational system does not waste talent. It is better that this sort of kid gets a chance to attend a first-rate college than that some callow rake (I think of Donald Trump as a prime example of someone who would have never made it into college had he not been from a very rich family... and it is best that someone like he ends up selling used cars) waste the opportunity that some talented kid might appreciate. (Trump is one of the last of the 'legacy' students, the sorts who gets admitted because his parents made big donations to the college. Great colleges want to spread their influence into more of the world, which indicates that some promising kid from the barrio or the Rez  might learn the ways of Harvard and bring those back to the barrio or the Rez and shake things up there -- for the better. Something like the late John Lewis' "Good Trouble"). 

Let's knock profit unduly. In a mom-and-pop business, profit is the family's income, and it is a reward for toil, skill, time-value of money in an investment, and wise stewardship of resources. Profit ensures that one can put money aside for retirement with a modest return instead of having to stash cash to keep it from being devoured by some  fee-taker. If one has little imagination on how to invest money (and if one has a job that keeps one busy, such is so) then stocks and bonds are reasonable investments because those can beat inflation. The opposite of profits are losses, and losses go to those entities that either misbehave (like Enrob or Lehman Brothers) or fail to adapt to the times (like Penn Central in its day and Sears more recently). 

The fault with capitalism is rarely that someone makes a profit off some innovation in objects or service. I used to buy lots of stuff at Sears and rarely at Wal*Mart. That is now inverted. Wal*Mart came into existence in the 1960's, when Sears was going strong. Now Sears is dying. Wal*Mart did some things well, although it is far from a perfect market for me. Its demographic listens to country music, which isn't my intellectual zone. (I confess; I am an intellectual snob. My music for a cross-country road trip would be something like this:

 

That is not the Wal*Mart demographic. 

The problem with capitalism is not the profit motive. It is social stratification, and social stratification promotes an empty-headed figure like Donald Trump as a culture-creator (The Apprentice? Yuck! I fired that TV show quickly with my remote control!), "thinker" (anyone who pushes demonstrable falsehood is worse than worthless), or politician. (We saw the result over four of the dreariest years in American history that one cannot blame on some foreigner or a natural disaster. Social stratification ensures that talents will be wasted because such either don't transform quickly and fully into lucre for the Master Class or imply rewards to the 'wrong' people. The celebrity circus that Howe and Strauss deride in a 3T at least has a few superstar actors, pop musicians, and sports stars spending as lavishly as they earn, so they are good for churning loose income into a movie studio, record company, or sports franchise.     

Marx himself stated that capitalists who challenged the stratified order of the middle ages were initially agents of social, economic, and even moral progress. As time passed, less-talented, astute people became owners and managers who got to live off the legacy of innovation. Revenue goes increasingly into bureaucracy full at first of cronies of the original tycoon and in turn the offspring of such cronies instead of into research and development or investment in productive infrastructure. The biggest firm becomes adept only at squeezing competitors our and deterring new competition... and there can be no social consequence other than the social stratification that left-leaning people find loathsome about capitalism at its worst. 

If anyone thinks that Marxism-Leninism offers a viable alternative through government ownership and operation of productive enterprise because it overtly opposes the inequality of capitalism as organization of productive industry he can think again. Bureaucracy flourished even more rapidly under the Stalinist perversion of the Marxist-Leninist ideal than it did under capitalism. 'Socialist' hagiography may have flattered the proletariat, but the bureaucratic structure of socialist enterprise ossified even faster. Figure that a Henry Ford (who really was an awful person), Sam Walton, or Ross Perot did everything possible to thwart bureaucratic bloat while active participants in their businesses; State boards that micromanaged all productivity of factory and farm filled with people more adept at controlling processes and assets... and the people who managed them were the revolutionaries of the Revolution followed by the usual heirs of any elite of ownership: their kids. People who praised the proletariat in whose name the system operated ended up lording it over the proles. Such is human nature with power.    

....Yes, Biden is just as much pro-capital as Trump. The difference is that Biden wants capitalism to work for people other than capitalists and Trump wants it to serve some nightmare in which a few people get everything other than the bare means of existence for people necessary to do the productive work  and maintain a well-oiled machine of vice and graft.

[nyballot]

Americans are victims and hypocrites now.

If Americans are outraged that Commies can search for the addresses of Trump donors then why can't Nazis make a website that lists the addresses of Biden donors？

If Americans are angry that Commies tear down statues then why don't Americans raise funds to build statues?

If Americans hate Marxists that have award shows for ladyboys then why don't Americans start churches that promote morals?

If Americans hate child activists that support gun control then why don't Americans find child activists who support gun rights?

If Americans hate foreign countries that meddle in US elections then why do Americans support overthrowing foreign governments?

If Americans hate that North Korea tortures and has nuclear bombs then why do Americans support US torture and nuclear weapons?

If Americans hate that Commies get votes by supporting illegal immigrants then why don't Nazis support illegal aliens?

If you think that your company is greedy for paying low wages then why don't you quit and start your own business?

If you hate that you live next door to a negro then why don't you move to a white town?

If you support the right to an abortion then why not support the right to be exempt from mandatory vaccines?

If Americans think that you must have an ID to vote then why not be forced to have an ID to buy a gun?

Think.

[Eric the Green]

President Trump Job Approval
Approve 41.1
Disapprove 56.1
Disapprove +15.0
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/elections/2020/

[random3]

Some say that anyone who is not awake by now cannot be saved, but still we must try.

Blaming Zionists, Freemasons, the Vatican, Muslims, and illegal immigrants for the US collapse might be true, but this information is just a distraction and doesn't really help you. Too many targets are as bad as no targets.

Manafort, Wray, and Stone might all go to jail, but this news is useless. The USA will still remain a bankrupt warmongering police state.

Soros, Bush, Cheney, Brennan, Clinton, Obama, Trump, Clapper, and Lerner will never go to prison.

What people really need to know now is what to do.

The elites are insane and want everything.

All the lines have been crossed and all the doors are closed.

There is no hope. Every day after today will be worse.

One good thing about the collapse is that old problems will become insignificant. You don't need to worry about paying back student loans if the government shuts down your business.

Your life is over now. All that you have today is all that you will ever have. You will never be able to travel abroad again.

This year will be very eventful.

Biden might be arrested, resign, or die.

There will be lockdowns, mandatory vaccines, and mandatory masks.

The stock market will crash.

There will be inflation.

Cash will be banned.

ATM machines, power, water, and the Internet will be shut down.

There will be looting and riots.

If you know a little bit of history, seeing the future is easy now.

Property will be nationalized.

Reporters and lawyers will be arrested. Preachers and monks will be killed.

Cities will be walled off.

There will be struggle sessions, re-education camps, concentration camps, death squads, show trials, and summary executions.

Congress might be abolished.

The US flag and national anthem will be changed and the USA will be renamed.

Buy medicine, survival books, food, ammo, guns, camo,
body armor, a tent, and gold now. Move to a small white town in South Dakota or buy a sailboat.

The globalists will cull the 99% by using abortion, birth control, starvation, concentration camps, and war.

Pass the word.

[pbrower2a]

(01-28-2021, 07:04 PM)nyballot Wrote: Americans are victims and hypocrites now.

The only people that I can exempt from calling hypocrites are those people purely and proudly evil. Such people have no pretense to a moral compass. 

Quote:If Americans are outraged that Commies can search for the addresses of Trump donors then why can't Nazis make a website that lists the addresses of Biden donors？

Do you refer to Communists or 'cultural Marxists'? 'Cultural Marxism' might even turn a profit.  

Quote:If Americans hate Marxists that have award shows for ladyboys then why don't Americans start churches that promote morals?

BORING!

[Einzige]

Quote:If anyone thinks that Marxism-Leninism offers a viable alternative through government ownership and operation of productive enterprise because it overtly opposes the inequality of capitalism as organization of productive industry he can think again.

As usual, when it comes to Marxism, you have no clue what you're talking about. Read Engels. Nationalization is capitalist.

Quote: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.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch03.htm

Quote:Bureaucracy flourished even more rapidly under the Stalinist perversion of the Marxist-Leninist ideal than it did under capitalism. 

Quote:The Soviet Union was capitalist. Read Lenin.

Quote:

Quote:No one, I think, in studying the question of the economic system of Russia, had denied its transitional character. Nor, I think, has any Communist denied that the term Socialist Soviet Republic implies the determination of Soviet power to achieve the transition to socialism, and not that the new economic system is recognized as a socialist order.

- V.I. Lenin, "Left-Wing Childishness and the Petty-Bourgeois Mentality"

So if Lenin didn't think the Soviet Union was socialist - what did he think it was?

State capitalism, modeled on the German war economy.

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 it. Our task is to hasten this copying even more than Peter hastened the copying of Western culture by barbarian Russia, and we must not hesitate to use barbarous methods in fighting barbarism. If there are anarchists and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries (I recall off-hand the speeches of Karelin and Ghe at the meeting of the Central Executive Committee) who indulge in Narcissus-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).

Quote:Socialist' hagiography may have flattered the proletariat,

It doesn't. Read Marx.

Quote: When socialist writers ascribe this world-historic role to the proletariat, it is not at all, as Critical Criticism pretends to believe, because they regard the proletarians as gods. Rather the contrary. Since in the fully-formed proletariat the abstraction of all humanity, even of the semblance of humanity, is practically completeneed — the practical expression of necessity — is driven directly to revolt against this inhumanity, it follows that the proletariat can and must emancipate itself.

[pbrower2a]

Einzige --

Just as nobody would now accept Darwin as the last word on biological evolution, Einstein as the last word on physics, Freud as the final word on psychology, or Gauguin as the final destination of painting, nobody has a cause to accept that Marx or Engels are the last words on economics. People who want to know the cutting edge in biological evolution (which relates heavily to the war between Man and microorganism, carcinogen, and now Lowy body) do not turn to Darwin, whose works are best recognized as pedagogical devices; they often turn to genetics. Einstein got as much out of physics as he could in his lifetime, and he died sixty-five years ago. Special relativity is almost certainly the last basic physics that anyone could ever discover, and a miracle like Einstein is unlikely to appear again in physics. It is practically impossible to read high-quality literature from about 1920 onward without finding the influence of Freud... which says that Freud is practically a fossil in psychology and psychiatry.

Capitalism is not a suicide pact. It could go one of two ways in the aftermath of Marx. One was to intensify the inequality and repression, culminating in fascism with its stultifying effects on the mind, its degradation of the working class, its elimination of competition (I see the Holocaust in part as an effort by German cartels to eliminate the large number of small-scale capitalists who kept Germany partially competitive. German Jews were a disproportionate share of small-business owners and operators; would-be monopolists find them as much a menace to profit maximization as Commies to the title of ownership of enterprises), and wars for profit that make easy gain for profiteers until the wars go awry and lead to the dissolution of the political system. The other was to humanize capitalism so that the worker has a stake in it. Someone like Henry Ford, who was not a nice person, wanted his workers to see themselves in better housing and using cars to commute to work instead of slow city buses, and to not have to compel their children to be child labor.

More relevant to modern economics is John Maynard Keynes. I could elaborate more, but I will stop there.

[Einzige]

A Keynes did was to retroactively justify the measure's Capital undertook to extricate itself from the crisis of the early 20th century, providing the capitalist reasoning for the capitalist end of the business-labor peace that produced the postwar consensus. In theory, Keynesianism says that all economic crises are the product of economic under consumption and underinvestment- an excuse for stimulating both, and thereby perpetuating capitalist social relations. Marx transcended the arguments of Keynes before Keynes was born, dealing with proto-Keynesian positions at length in the Gothakritik.

Marxism is objective and verifiable. Marxism holds that end stage capitlaism will produce a "propertyless" working class living on credits and owning nothing - and behold we are entering that age now (and actually have been inching towards it since the inception of neoliberalism in the mid-70s). You do not own your home; you rent. You will not own a car; you will rideshare. You will not own your cell phone; you have a plan. Your health insurance is provided by your employer, even if coerced by the government.

[treehugger]

Americans are completely retarded now.

Americans scream that there's nothing wrong with Trump paying taxes to China if Biden did, too.

Americans think being groped by the TSA is just fine if Muslims are, too.

Americans say tyranny is wonderful if North Korea is a police state, too.

[pbrower2a]

(02-26-2021, 11:09 PM)treehugger Wrote: Americans are completely retarded now.

Who -- me?

Quote:Americans scream that there's nothing wrong with Trump paying taxes to China if Biden did, too.

That does not compute.

Quote:Americans think being groped by the TSA is just fine if Muslims are, too.

At this point the fascistic Right might be more dangerous than "Islamofascists".

Quote:Americans say tyranny is wonderful if North Korea is a police state, too.

Which Americans?

[treehugger]

If Nazis and Communists both support wars, debt, and tyranny, what's the difference?

[Einzige]

(02-27-2021, 04:38 AM)treehugger Wrote: If Nazis and Communists both support wars, debt, and tyranny, what's the difference?

I'm a Communist. I support international class war, the abolition of money (and debt with it) and the class dictatorship of the proletariat.

[treehugger]

Didn't the Soviet Union fail?

[Einzige]

(02-27-2021, 05:53 AM)treehugger Wrote: Didn't the Soviet Union fail?

The Soviets were (State) capitalist.

[Captain Genet]

(02-27-2021, 06:12 AM)Einzige Wrote:

(02-27-2021, 05:53 AM)treehugger Wrote: Didn't the Soviet Union fail?

The Soviets were (State) capitalist.

That's pretty big news to people who actually lived there.