The Partisan Divide on Issues

[Einzige]

(02-03-2021, 12:46 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(02-03-2021, 12:32 PM)Einzige Wrote:

Quote:  Keynes is vastly more modern than Marx, who had an industrial focus.

Marx anticipated the integration of computers into the economy and the transition to an Information Economy through his correspondence with Charles Babbagee (c.f. "Fragment on Machines", Grundrisse. Moreover, there were advocates for fiat money-financed social spending before Keynes, and Marx dealt with them often - e.g. the Lassalleans.

Quote:There is a diversity in today's economy that vastly exceeds anything either man contemplated.

Again, Marx speculated about the computerization of the economy four years after the American Civil War.

Quote:Nature builds no machines, no locomotives, railways, electric telegraphs, self-acting mules etc. These are products of human industry; natural material transformed into organs of the human will over nature, or of human participation in nature. They are organs of the human brain, created by the human hand; the power of knowledge, objectified. The development of fixed capital indicates to what degree general social knowledge has become a direct force of production, and to what degree, hence, the conditions of the process of social life itself have come under the control of the general intellect and been transformed in accordance with it. To what degree the powers of social production have been produced, not only in the form of knowledge, but also as immediate organs of social practice, of the real life process.

... But, once adopted into the production process of capital, the means of labour passes through different metamorphoses, whose culmination is the machine, or rather, an automatic system of machinery (system of machinery: the automatic one is merely its most complete, most adequate form, and alone transforms machinery into a system), set in motion by an automaton, a moving power that moves itself; this automaton consisting of numerous mechanical and intellectual organs, so that the workers themselves are cast merely as its conscious linkages.

Labor is labor. We still exist in an industrial economy; the idea of a "service economy" is a myth. The only distinction is that industry is now computerized, and the workers are conscious linkages between machines.

Quote:Ownership can remain in private hands if it is distributed widely and fairly, and opposed by a public sphere that keeps it in check.

It can, but it won't.

Quote:Integrating all that under one umbrella guarantees tyranny (e.g. the Soviet or Maoist models) or chaos and bedlam (if the state 'withers away').  Let ownership devolve to a sovereign wealth fund, created by taxing corporations through stock rather than money.  Small mom-and-pop operations would be more hobby than business, why bother with them?

Because this is all basically deterministic. Small mom and pop shops play no role at all in the real economy.

Feel free to shout, but it makes no noticeable difference.  What we call productivity today is only lightly tied to actual physical production.  Marx had an industrial-centric view of the economy that is no longer truly valid, and his  sociology is simply unworkable.  Full credit: he understood that all value originates from labor.  That may be changing now.

Nonsense. All things ultimately measure physical production. The most erudite symphony performer who has no understanding of economic or social theory at all, who lives on the wings of eagles is... ultimately paid to produce physical hours of a performance.

As far as the LTV goes, that was the default assumption by everyone from the most radical Communist to the staunchest conservative until the marginal revolution - which is now being called into question insofar as it was blatantly politically motivated. At any rate, Marx did not actually think all value originated from labor - what does originated from labor is all exchange value.

Quote:Labor is not the source of all wealth. Nature is just as much a source of use values (and it is surely of such that material wealth consists!) as labor, which is itself only the manifestation of a force of nature, human labor power.

[Eric the Green]

(02-03-2021, 12:46 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(02-03-2021, 12:32 PM)Einzige Wrote:

Quote:  Keynes is vastly more modern than Marx, who had an industrial focus.

Marx anticipated the integration of computers into the economy and the transition to an Information Economy through his correspondence with Charles Babbagee (c.f. "Fragment on Machines", Grundrisse. Moreover, there were advocates for fiat money-financed social spending before Keynes, and Marx dealt with them often - e.g. the Lassalleans.

Quote:There is a diversity in today's economy that vastly exceeds anything either man contemplated.

Again, Marx speculated about the computerization of the economy four years after the American Civil War.

Quote:Nature builds no machines, no locomotives, railways, electric telegraphs, self-acting mules etc. These are products of human industry; natural material transformed into organs of the human will over nature, or of human participation in nature. They are organs of the human brain, created by the human hand; the power of knowledge, objectified. The development of fixed capital indicates to what degree general social knowledge has become a direct force of production, and to what degree, hence, the conditions of the process of social life itself have come under the control of the general intellect and been transformed in accordance with it. To what degree the powers of social production have been produced, not only in the form of knowledge, but also as immediate organs of social practice, of the real life process.

... But, once adopted into the production process of capital, the means of labour passes through different metamorphoses, whose culmination is the machine, or rather, an automatic system of machinery (system of machinery: the automatic one is merely its most complete, most adequate form, and alone transforms machinery into a system), set in motion by an automaton, a moving power that moves itself; this automaton consisting of numerous mechanical and intellectual organs, so that the workers themselves are cast merely as its conscious linkages.

Labor is labor. We still exist in an industrial economy; the idea of a "service economy" is a myth. The only distinction is that industry is now computerized, and the workers are conscious linkages between machines.

Quote:Ownership can remain in private hands if it is distributed widely and fairly, and opposed by a public sphere that keeps it in check.

It can, but it won't.

Quote:Integrating all that under one umbrella guarantees tyranny (e.g. the Soviet or Maoist models) or chaos and bedlam (if the state 'withers away').  Let ownership devolve to a sovereign wealth fund, created by taxing corporations through stock rather than money.  Small mom-and-pop operations would be more hobby than business, why bother with them?

Because this is all basically deterministic. Small mom and pop shops play no role at all in the real economy.

Feel free to shout, but it makes no noticeable difference.  What we call productivity today is only lightly tied to actual physical production.  Marx had an industrial-centric view of the economy that is no longer truly valid, and his  sociology is simply unworkable.  Full credit: he understood that all value originates from labor.  That may be changing now.

Agreed with David.

The physical production economy has no relationship to value. Value is intrinsic. Nature is a value in itself, and so is life, spirit and soul. The value of Nature does not consist on what we can produce from it. We need to reduce the size of corporations. Mom and Pop is better than oligarchy. Small farmers are better than industrial farms. Nature, including its spiritual side, being the source of life, is the foundation of value.

Intellectual and cultural property, the results of education, tourism, government work, non-profits and charities, ideas and philosophy, religion and spiritual/cultural movements, entrepreneurship, innovation and inspiration, investment, capital; are all vital parts of the economy. Production today is not industrial; our economy is post-industrial. Intelligence and inspiration is the principle value. The purpose of life is not labor to make products, and certainly not factory labor. The purpose of life is spiritual growth, and sharing its results.

I know you want to abolish capital, but this will never fly. Americans are not communists, nor are Europeans, nor are any other people in the world. The need now is for mixed (public/private)-eco-economy democracies. Getting there is a huge challenge, and would be a huge advance.

[pbrower2a]

(02-03-2021, 11:30 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(02-02-2021, 11:52 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(01-31-2021, 10:52 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(01-31-2021, 10:23 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(01-31-2021, 06:54 PM)mamabug Wrote: Which, again, is all moot because SCOTUS won't hear either case since HE. WON'T. BE. CONVICTED.

If he isn't convicted, a bunch of Republican senators will have discredited themselves in the general election.  If he is convicted, we will be rid of Trump.  It is worth putting up with a little theater.

The only Republican senators running the risk of being discredited and removed from contention are the five who are directly associated with another Democratic run shit show.

Seems to me that they are mostly discredited already, will lose the primary if they fight Trump, will lose the general election if they don't, and are somehow traveling up (expletive deleted) Creek without a paddle.

I think that's why McConnell has finally decided that taking the hit now beats taking it just prior to an election.  He's praying that 17 Republicans will purge the party of Trump.  If the Dems were as cynical as McConnell has been, they would sit on their hands, and force a majority of Reps to 'convict' before they finish the job.

And you're right.  No matter what they do, the Reps lose in some fashion.

My take. Trump is trouble.

Trump is a disaster, and the election of 2020 was just close enough to delude many on the Right into believing that winning the next election can be done with a few tweaks or the supposedly-inevitable disaster that liberal policies will certainly engender. By 2022 Americans will clamor for tax cuts for the Master Class, an abandonment of even an incipient environmentalism, welfare cuts, and of course pay cuts to ensure that the most competent people get what they want. Such is the fantasy of Atlas Shrugged. 

Well, so is trickle-down economics, and so is the elitist ideology that assumes that only those already filthy rich know how to manage economic affairs. We know how that works -- all goes to the few, and everyone else suffers... and suffers... and suffers. 

Trump gave a populist (if of the worst sort, a resentful, mean-spirited, anti-rational, bigoted, anti-expert) veneer to plutocracy. With that comes his sordid behavior. With little surprise someone whose economic ethos is to 'burn' customers, suppliers, and subcontractors; whose sexuality is exploitative and dehumanizing; and who makes Harry S. Truman look like a polished scholar with a PhD by contrast. (OK, Truman was an avid reader and knew enough to seek out the knowledge that he needed for his political life, and deferred to the experts when someone knew something critical that he did not know. Someone who knows the limitations of his expertise and takes advantage of others' expertise when such is available can lead as someone who thinks he knows it all. That's almost as good as Obama, who well knows the intricacies of law but knows his limitations on engineering, medicine, science, or military matters. 

The GOP needs to cast off the fascistic troublemakers who think that violence and the disruption of legislative process are acceptable. It needs to trash conspiracy theories and those who offer them as wisdom. People with firm belief in absurdity are far more troublesome than people have no pretension to arcane nonsense. And, yes, it must cast off someone who brings out the worst in human nature even if such is tempting.

The GOP needs to make itself less amenable to demagogues like Trump. Trump got the nomination in part by winning pluralities in winner-take-all primaries, often in states that have no chance of voting for a Republican for president. Obama in 2008, Hillary Clinton in 2012, and Biden in 2016 had to contest primaries without winning all delegates in large states with perhaps 30% of the primary vote in a five-way race. Sure, Trump was unique, something completely novel in American history. He also has proved to be the most harmful President in American history. Buchanan wasn't up to keeping America together, but at least his dubious efforts to appease the slave-holding interests seemed to better fit the Constitution than anything else. Trump ripped at the rule of law, legal precedent, and norms of democratic governance. He pitted one side of the political spectrum at another while offering anything to what he saw as "losers" because they had lost "his" election. 

This is not to say that a more rational expression of right-wing economics and an aggressive foreign policy will work better in practice. It could be even more effective in committing America to the degradation of life for a majority of Americans and getting America into some crusade that proves a disaster. If you thought the Vietnam war a bad time for America, then just think of what a war with Venezuela would be like. Or Iran!

It is more difficult to use rational arguments to push something suspect. The techniques that a salesman uses to get someone to buy a big-ticket purchase such as a car or piece of furniture usually involve an appeal to something other than reason. After all, there may be some incentive to get a lemon of a car or a piece of schlock furniture off the sales floor, and this may lead to a bonus. So one doesn't sell the car; one may sell the idea that this car will impress the (guys/chicks), that buying this car will impress your boss as an expression of astute wisdom in making consumer choices, that it can make outdoor adventures more likely... I can see through this as a customer. I tried selling, and I got as far as I could with rational arguments. OK, the bigger screen TV will let you see things better, but I was not going to say that one TV was better than another for delivering a picture if the two TV's had the same picture tube. I recognized that the difference between a floor-standing TV selling for $600 and one selling for $900 was strictly furniture (although differences in furniture are legitimate, that has nothing to do with the picture tubes which are the same). But that dates me, and it explains how I was not quite the super-salesman that someone more dishonest might be. I see mass-produced material objects strictly for their functional character. If you want something to impress people, then buy art or antiques or collect things that can make you more sophisticated by using them (the Great Books, good music, and maybe some classic movies or even TV  series...) The status symbols show you as a sucker.      

Education is good for separating the good from the chaff in ideas and thought. Donald Trump teaches clearly that training suitable for making one a good technician or functionary is inadequate for making one able to fend off bigotry and other demagoguery. Some people are highly adept at making spurious arguments, and some of those do more harm than does what the fictional George Babbitt did, selling people houses that they couldn't really afford in the 1920's (or as did even worse shysters eighty years later). Donald Trump is one of the most adept liars who has ever lived, and he sold 74 million Americans on one of the worst frauds to have ever lived: himself.

[Einzige]

I will address what is addressable here. 

Quote:Mom and Pop is better than oligarchy. Small farmers are better than industrial farms.

This is an assumption. Small businesses are of necessity more exploitative of their workers and with fewer benefits than larger ones, whatever the character of their owners.

 

Quote:Nature... is the foundation of value.

Marx concurs.

Quote:I know you want to abolish capital, but this will never fly. Americans are not communists, nor are Europeans, nor are any other people in the world.

Marx does not require them to be.

[Eric the Green]

(02-03-2021, 02:12 PM)Einzige Wrote: I will address what is addressable here. 

Quote:Mom and Pop is better than oligarchy. Small farmers are better than industrial farms.

This is an assumption. Small businesses are of necessity more exploitative of their workers and with fewer benefits than larger ones, whatever the character of their owners.

 

Quote:Nature... is the foundation of value.

Marx concurs.

Quote:I know you want to abolish capital, but this will never fly. Americans are not communists, nor are Europeans, nor are any other people in the world.

Marx does not require them to be.

But you want to abolish capital. I agree that many times small business can be tougher and less beneficial to its workers. That's a good point. But it has more intangible benefits, which Marx even recognized, having to do with being connected to your work instead of alienated from it. A small owner class is a good economic segment. It is fulfilling to own a business. Companies that are too large are alienating. They also gain too much control. They can control the market, resulting in worse products, lower wages, worse working conditions, higher prices. They crush innovation and hurt the environment and the climate. Oligarchy and its wealthy class takes over the government too. It buys politicians and keeps money in politics through its political Party's actions. It concentrates wealth, thus concentrating power.

Nature, conceived as raw material only, is not a source of value; only production. Nature is an intrinsic value because it's beautiful and inspirational, and because it supports all life. It has rights. Humans do not have the right to dominate Nature and submit it only to their needs. Only to tend it. Nature is only valuable if it is recognized as spiritual. Materialism by itself destroys life. Indigenous people understand Nature; western industrial people do not, fully. I don't oppose technology and production, but let's make it eco-friendly.

I forgot to add tourism to my list of economic values (I just added it). Eco-tourism in particular is a rising big business. What physical product does tourism produce? Or are you going to reduce it to souvenirs? Certainly, our economy today is mostly services, and high tech, and fewer workers directly make industrial products. Work is more intellectual and interactive and less routine.

[Classic-Xer]

(02-02-2021, 03:38 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(01-31-2021, 10:52 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(01-31-2021, 10:23 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(01-31-2021, 06:54 PM)mamabug Wrote: Which, again, is all moot because SCOTUS won't hear either case since HE. WON'T. BE. CONVICTED.

If he isn't convicted, a bunch of Republican senators will have discredited themselves in the general election.  If he is convicted, we will be rid of Trump.  It is worth putting up with a little theater.

The only Republican senators running the risk of being discredited and removed from contention are the five who are directly associated with another Democratic run shit show.

They are the heroes in this affair.

They are meaningless in this affair.

[Classic-Xer]

(02-03-2021, 02:25 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: But you want to abolish capital. I agree that many times small business can be tougher and less beneficial to its workers. That's a good point. But it has more intangible benefits, which Marx even recognized, having to do with being connected to your work instead of alienated from it. A small owner class is a good economic segment. It is fulfilling to own a business. Companies that are too large are alienating. They also gain too much control. They can control the market, resulting in worse products, lower wages, worse working conditions, higher prices. They crush innovation and hurt the environment and the climate. Oligarchy and its wealthy class takes over the government too. It buys politicians and keeps money in politics through its political Party's actions. It concentrates wealth, thus concentrating power.

Nature, conceived as raw material only, is not a source of value; only production. Nature is an intrinsic value because it's beautiful and inspirational, and because it supports all life. It has rights. Humans do not have the right to dominate Nature and submit it only to their needs. Only to tend it. Nature is only valuable if it is recognized as spiritual. Materialism by itself destroys life. Indigenous people understand Nature; western industrial people do not, fully. I don't oppose technology and production, but let's make it eco-friendly.

I forgot to add tourism to my list of economic values (I just added it). Eco-tourism in particular is a rising big business. What physical product does tourism produce? Or are you going to reduce it to souvenirs? Certainly, our economy today is mostly services, and high tech, and fewer workers directly make industrial products. Work is more intellectual and interactive and less routine.

Well, you can stick with the service economy and high tech industries and rely on fewer workers and expanding welfare programs and paying people to do nothing other than vote to keep it all going if you like but don't be surprised if a large segment of the country rejects it and watches as your world turns on each other and falls apart.

[pbrower2a]

(02-03-2021, 02:25 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(02-03-2021, 02:12 PM)Einzige Wrote: I will address what is addressable here. 

Quote:Mom and Pop is better than oligarchy. Small farmers are better than industrial farms.

This is an assumption. Small businesses are of necessity more exploitative of their workers and with fewer benefits than larger ones, whatever the character of their owners.

 

Quote:Nature... is the foundation of value.

Marx concurs.

Quote:I know you want to abolish capital, but this will never fly. Americans are not communists, nor are Europeans, nor are any other people in the world.

Marx does not require them to be.

But you want to abolish capital. I agree that many times small business can be tougher and less beneficial to its workers. That's a good point. But it has more intangible benefits, which Marx even recognized, having to do with being connected to your work instead of alienated from it. A small owner class is a good economic segment. It is fulfilling to own a business. Companies that are too large are alienating. They also gain too much control. They can control the market, resulting in worse products, lower wages, worse working conditions, higher prices. They crush innovation and hurt the environment and the climate. Oligarchy and its wealthy class takes over the government too. It buys politicians and keeps money in politics through its political Party's actions. It concentrates wealth, thus concentrating power.

The virtue of small business is that it cannot oppress as can monopolistic or cartelized, vertically-integrated entities with bureaucracies capable of regulating the customer. A small business that treats its customers badly typically goes under rather fast. A giant enterprise can stay such even with a bare profit or simply living off assets (depreciation expense is not a monetary outflow). Big businesses can corner market without trying; they can bribe politicians through campaign contributions so that those businesses get special tax breaks, sweetheart deals with the government, or special breaks in regulation. Small business can do none of that. 

Another virtue of small business, which you relate, is that people in them can see more of the picture. In a giant enterprise like the manufacturing plant in Modern Times, an ordinary worker (Charlie Chaplin's "tramp") can become a machine subordinate to a machine, which is the inverse of what one expects in the relationship between Man and machine. Small business is more likely to do craftsmanship which I find much more individual and thus human.  

Quote:Nature, conceived as raw material only, is not a source of value; only production. Nature is an intrinsic value because it's beautiful and inspirational, and because it supports all life. It has rights. Humans do not have the right to dominate Nature and submit it only to their needs. Only to tend it. Nature is only valuable if it is recognized as spiritual. Materialism by itself destroys life. Indigenous people understand Nature; western industrial people do not, fully. I don't oppose technology and production, but let's make it eco-friendly.

So why are diamonds expensive and is water cheap? Because, useful as water is, it is usually easy to get. OK, fresh water is much easier to get in Ireland than in Namibia, which explains why Ireland is very different from Namibia in its economic character. Namibia has diamonds, but those are difficult enough to get that only those willing to give up something quite valuable can buy them ultimately from the deBeers trust that owns the diamond-mining business in Namibia. Nature is a source of much of the bounty of our world, and it is often a stopgap against unrelieved ugliness. I am not so sure about druid-like qualities being necessary for the appreciation of nature, but it is certainly appreciable much of the time. That's not to say that I want to be at the summit of Mount Washington or in Death Valley if I can instead be in almost-completely-artificial New York City. This said, much that is both precious and human has inspiration in nature, and much that is life is natural in origin. Much of what we are is a consequence of nature.         

Quote:I forgot to add tourism to my list of economic values (I just added it). Eco-tourism in particular is a rising big business. What physical product does tourism produce? Or are you going to reduce it to souvenirs? Certainly, our economy today is mostly services, and high tech, and fewer workers directly make industrial products. Work is more intellectual and interactive and less routine.

I need tell Einzige that I have read Capital. I am not fully sure that I fully understand what the Communist dream is and how it will be realized. I am not sure that Marx said how it would be achieved except through miracles of productivity (he underestimated the value of technology in forcing social change), but the Communist world would be one of ease because the production of all human needs would be itself easy. Commodity fetishes would become silly and irrelevant indicators of someone living in a discreditable past.  People would be doing things for their own purpose, and not for exchange in lopsided deals in which people toil greatly to give minor bliss to someone who has everything. The Communist world would be an creative person's paradise, and make predatory behavior toward other persons irrelevant and unwelcome. From the age of slave-owning, agrarian societies to early capitalism, the harsh economic reality of the time has required either murderous brutality or grinding poverty to ensure that the common man subordinate himself to some people more powerful than themselves. 

Paradoxically it may be the more market-oriented societies that have done more to approach Communism than 'socialist' regimes under Communist parties that sought to direct all economic activity.

[David Horn]

(02-04-2021, 09:38 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(02-02-2021, 03:38 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(01-31-2021, 10:52 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(01-31-2021, 10:23 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(01-31-2021, 06:54 PM)mamabug Wrote: Which, again, is all moot because SCOTUS won't hear either case since HE. WON'T. BE. CONVICTED.

If he isn't convicted, a bunch of Republican senators will have discredited themselves in the general election.  If he is convicted, we will be rid of Trump.  It is worth putting up with a little theater.

The only Republican senators running the risk of being discredited and removed from contention are the five who are directly associated with another Democratic run shit show.

They are the heroes in this affair.

They are meaningless in this affair.

Addressing a number of comments:

1. SCOTUS has no role in an impeachment, but may rule on the legitimacy of impeaching after a person leaves office.  On the merits: ruling that a political act is moot means the court believes it has a say in the matter.  I seriously doubt that interfering makes any sense to them-- any of them.
   
2. History will judge the recalcitrant GOP Senators harshly and the few who spoke-up very kindly.  By then, they will all be dead.  Short term: let's hope that sanity returns, and soon.   
   
3. The GOP is already coming apart at the seams.  If 2022 is a big Dem year, and that's certainly possible, then Katie bar the door.
   

[Bob Butler 54]

(02-05-2021, 09:55 AM)David Horn Wrote: Addressing a number of comments:

1. SCOTUS has no role in an impeachment, but may rule on the legitimacy of impeaching after a person leaves office.  On the merits: ruling that a political act is moot means the court believes it has a say in the matter.  I seriously doubt that interfering makes any sense to them-- any of them.
   
2. History will judge the recalcitrant GOP Senators harshly and the few who spoke-up very kindly.  By then, they will all be dead.  Short term: let's hope that sanity returns, and soon.   
   
3. The GOP is already coming apart at the seams.  If 2022 is a big Dem year, and that's certainly possible, then Katie bar the door.
   

Agreed.

[Bob Butler 54]

(02-04-2021, 09:58 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Well, you can stick with the service economy and high tech industries and rely on fewer workers and expanding welfare programs and paying people to do nothing other than vote to keep it all going if you like but don't be surprised if a large segment of the country rejects it and watches as your world turns on each other and falls apart.

I have long been saying that the jobs shipped abroad and increased productivity have been countered by the production of luxuries.  I might even count flipping hamburgers as a luxury considering that I flip my own.  At any rate, in order to keep profits going the elites have encouraged stuff that need not be done, really.

At this point we no longer have resources to throw around.  An emphasis on performing less labor and using few resources is possible.  Shorter work weeks, younger retirements, less emphasis on the latest widget, are suggested.  This could be folded into 'building back better', but if so I have seen nothing much.

Too much emphasis is on returning to what we were.  Maybe the Awakening?

[pbrower2a]

(02-05-2021, 09:55 AM)David Horn Wrote:

1. SCOTUS has no role in an impeachment, but may rule on the legitimacy of impeaching after a person leaves office.  On the merits: ruling that a political act is moot means the court believes it has a say in the matter.  I seriously doubt that interfering makes any sense to them-- any of them.
   
2. History will judge the recalcitrant GOP Senators harshly and the few who spoke-up very kindly.  By then, they will all be dead.  Short term: let's hope that sanity returns, and soon.   
   
3. The GOP is already coming apart at the seams.  If 2022 is a big Dem year, and that's certainly possible, then Katie bar the door.
   

1. This could be critical. The Supreme Court is almost never the first court to hear any case. It has never had to rule on a pattern of unconstitutional behavior by any elected official, Cabinet secretary, senior military officer, or director of an agency of law enforcement or intelligence. It will let Congress complete the task. 

2. One of the primary characteristics of Biden is that he likes things quiet. He has little use for political theater. People start to think, and the more that they think of the events of January 6, the more awful those events will look. Remember well that the insurrection used symbols and rhetoric in broad use at the time. Will the insurrection seem a logical conclusion of those symbols and rhetoric or will they seem to have been used by people who simply went too far? Time will tell. 

3. Ordinarily the midterm elections are disasters for the Party that wields the Presidency. The pattern that has held suggests that the GOP gains about twenty seats in the House and the majority... and six seats in the Senate. America would be ungovernable again, and Republicans would have a solid chance of winning the Presidency "back" with promises of jobs and tax cuts. There will be jobs, of course, but they will not be well remunerated. 

But -- this is late in a 4T. What is political wisdom going into a 4T often becomes nonsense. The Republican Party has taken a deep drive into Qraziness as one can expect the political culture to more reflect values of the majority of the Millennial Generation. Groups such as the Proud Boys (now deemed a terrorist group in Canada, and probably soon elsewhere -- I'm picking the European Union, Mexico, the UK, the Arab League, and Israel to do much the same soon) will become objects of derision. Political careers can end for picking the wrong side in the Insurrection.

This said, Donald Trump, never one to hold precedent or protocol in any higher regard than constraints on his sex life or sleazy practices in business, has demonstrated the necessity of character, precedent, and protocol. Practically all Democrats come out of this mess with no culpability.

We are at the apparent start of a new Skowronek cycle that comes after another enshrines a political ethos that at first gets some desirable and even necessary results at comparatively low costs but that toward its end gets diminishing returns. Toward the end of that cycle (and the recent neo-liberal one that begins with "Morning in America" and ends with the disgrace of Donald Trump) becomes stale or shows its bad side. The New Deal agenda became stale and lost its constituency due to old age; the neoliberal cycle increasingly showed its faults. If Reagan was able to get youth and industrial workers to lower their expectations in the names of efficiency and profit at the cost of human dignity, then Trump makes a nightmare out of it. 

If the Democratic Party has been slow to catch on to Millennial values, the Republican Party seems to have neglected those values completely. The Millennial Generation, as one can expect of a Civic generation, has tolerance of hierarchy and conformity only for such purposes as saving society from a clear and present danger such as the Confederacy, the Third Reich, the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, or Stalinism. Civic generations do not stand for shaky injustice. Let us remember that the role of the GI generation in the demise of segregationist politics; African-Americans who had fought the Jew-baiting racists of the Third Reich could turn against the Klan, and by the mid-1960's, white GI's generally buckled to the calls for civil rights for Southern blacks. Millennial values do not include acquiescence to policies that have been tried and found to not serve their stated purpose.  "Trickle-down" economics have served only economic elites.

[Bob Butler 54]

(02-05-2021, 02:13 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: The Parties have not changed much. Trump has taken Republicans further to the right, and has only brought out the simmering bigotry that was there since the sixties, including from the Southern strategy and the Goldwater candidacy.

During the Gilded Age and through the FDR, Truman, Ike period, the Democrats remained supporters of Jim Crow.  They were progressive in many ways, but remained the party of the south to the Republican party of the elites.  When LBJ went for the black vote, supported the civil rights movement, supported the war on poverty, things began to shift.  It had been a conflict between the party of the elites and the party of workers, between the party of the south and the party of the north.  It shifted when the progressives became progressive on race too.

With the southern strategy, the elites and the racists came together in the same party.

For years the combination of elite money and racist votes kept the Republican unraveling party dominant.  It seems now the money and votes aren’t working.  Black Lives Matter has brought the majority firmly against racism, and the money hasn’t helped enough.  What we are seeing today is in part the worst of the racists hanging with Trump.  Black Lives Matter won.  The racists are making a big stink trying to keep themselves alive.

Many racist organizations were involved in the capitol insurrection and supporting Trump.  The reds are not so much against democracy, but for white supremacy in America and the Republican Party.  Democracy is just less important to them, an accidental casualty they believe they can work around.

Biden has a bunch of easy to hit issues: COVID, the economy, systematic racism, red violence, and global warming.  Taking action on each of them is popular enough.  The Republican Party of obstruction, of not solving problems, is on the wrong side of each problem and the problem solving mood of a crisis.  If he can make significant gains overall, and he should, he will pick up the ground he need for a clear majority in 2022.  

Racism won’t go away.  It is too long imbedded in the culture for that.  But it looks like the war between the elite and racists elements of the Republican Party will destroy both.

At least I hope so.

[Bob Butler 54]

It seems according to CNN, Trump wasn't happy with the lawyers defending him.  That wasn't a good opening.  Maybe if he didn't insist in a poor defensive approach?

[Bob Butler 54]

As the Jim Crow era opened, the Supreme Court essentially eliminated the Bill of Rights.  The change wasn't really aimed at white southerners.  In practical ways, the white folk still applied the rights to themselves.  They weren't against rights.  They were just against black people having rights.  The Bill of Rights had to go.

In the same sort of backwards racist way, the January 6th capitol insurrectionists were't particularly against democracy.  They were just against a democracy with a majority made up of minorities, who could vote to put a major dent in the supposed white superiority.  Oh, for Trump himself and his enablers it might have been about power, but if you look a bit beneath the surface the rioters were from white superiority organizations.  It was about keeping a president who had racist leanings in power.  It was about the southern strategy going violent.

Democracy wasn't so much at risk as racism was.  Of course, I would favor democracy and abhor racism.  I'd abhor elitism as well.  The arrow of progress was pretty clear.

[Classic-Xer]

(02-05-2021, 09:55 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(02-04-2021, 09:38 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(02-02-2021, 03:38 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(01-31-2021, 10:52 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(01-31-2021, 10:23 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: If he isn't convicted, a bunch of Republican senators will have discredited themselves in the general election.  If he is convicted, we will be rid of Trump.  It is worth putting up with a little theater.

The only Republican senators running the risk of being discredited and removed from contention are the five who are directly associated with another Democratic run shit show.

They are the heroes in this affair.

They are meaningless in this affair.

Addressing a number of comments:

1. SCOTUS has no role in an impeachment, but may rule on the legitimacy of impeaching after a person leaves office.  On the merits: ruling that a political act is moot means the court believes it has a say in the matter.  I seriously doubt that interfering makes any sense to them-- any of them.
   
2. History will judge the recalcitrant GOP Senators harshly and the few who spoke-up very kindly.  By then, they will all be dead.  Short term: let's hope that sanity returns, and soon.   
   
3. The GOP is already coming apart at the seams.  If 2022 is a big Dem year, and that's certainly possible, then Katie bar the door.
   

I'm sorry dude but sanity isn't going to return until the Democratic party is eliminated one way or another at this point. It's only going to get worse for you and the Democratic party as a whole and a small remnant of the GOP from here on.

[Classic-Xer]

(02-05-2021, 08:21 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(02-05-2021, 09:55 AM)David Horn Wrote:

1. SCOTUS has no role in an impeachment, but may rule on the legitimacy of impeaching after a person leaves office.  On the merits: ruling that a political act is moot means the court believes it has a say in the matter.  I seriously doubt that interfering makes any sense to them-- any of them.
   
2. History will judge the recalcitrant GOP Senators harshly and the few who spoke-up very kindly.  By then, they will all be dead.  Short term: let's hope that sanity returns, and soon.   
   
3. The GOP is already coming apart at the seams.  If 2022 is a big Dem year, and that's certainly possible, then Katie bar the door.
   

1. This could be critical. The Supreme Court is almost never the first court to hear any case. It has never had to rule on a pattern of unconstitutional behavior by any elected official, Cabinet secretary, senior military officer, or director of an agency of law enforcement or intelligence. It will let Congress complete the task. 

2. One of the primary characteristics of Biden is that he likes things quiet. He has little use for political theater. People start to think, and the more that they think of the events of January 6, the more awful those events will look. Remember well that the insurrection used symbols and rhetoric in broad use at the time. Will the insurrection seem a logical conclusion of those symbols and rhetoric or will they seem to have been used by people who simply went too far? Time will tell. 

3. Ordinarily the midterm elections are disasters for the Party that wields the Presidency. The pattern that has held suggests that the GOP gains about twenty seats in the House and the majority... and six seats in the Senate. America would be ungovernable again, and Republicans would have a solid chance of winning the Presidency "back" with promises of jobs and tax cuts. There will be jobs, of course, but they will not be well remunerated. 

But -- this is late in a 4T. What is political wisdom going into a 4T often becomes nonsense. The Republican Party has taken a deep drive into Qraziness as one can expect the political culture to more reflect values of the majority of the Millennial Generation. Groups such as the Proud Boys (now deemed a terrorist group in Canada, and probably soon elsewhere -- I'm picking the European Union, Mexico, the UK, the Arab League, and Israel to do much the same soon) will become objects of derision. Political careers can end for picking the wrong side in the Insurrection.

This said, Donald Trump, never one to hold precedent or protocol in any higher regard than constraints on his sex life or sleazy practices in business, has demonstrated the necessity of character, precedent, and protocol. Practically all Democrats come out of this mess with no culpability.

We are at the apparent start of a new Skowronek cycle that comes after another enshrines a political ethos that at first gets some desirable and even necessary results at comparatively low costs but that toward its end gets diminishing returns. Toward the end of that cycle (and the recent neo-liberal one that begins with "Morning in America" and ends with the disgrace of Donald Trump) becomes stale or shows its bad side. The New Deal agenda became stale and lost its constituency due to old age; the neoliberal cycle increasingly showed its faults. If Reagan was able to get youth and industrial workers to lower their expectations in the names of efficiency and profit at the cost of human dignity, then Trump makes a nightmare out of it. 

If the Democratic Party has been slow to catch on to Millennial values, the Republican Party seems to have neglected those values completely. The Millennial Generation, as one can expect of a Civic generation, has tolerance of hierarchy and conformity only for such purposes as saving society from a clear and present danger such as the Confederacy, the Third Reich, the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, or Stalinism. Civic generations do not stand for shaky injustice. Let us remember that the role of the GI generation in the demise of segregationist politics; African-Americans who had fought the Jew-baiting racists of the Third Reich could turn against the Klan, and by the mid-1960's, white GI's generally buckled to the calls for civil rights for Southern blacks. Millennial values do not include acquiescence to policies that have been tried and found to not serve their stated purpose.  "Trickle-down" economics have served only economic elites.

You have no dignity left at this point. I take that back, you have whatever dignity there is, whatever remains being associated with the Democratic party these days. Oh well, we'll get to see how much integrity and character that's left and how much of the Democratic party is worth saving, preserving and carrying onward vs letting go of and leaving behind to die along with most of the West.

[Bob Butler 54]

(02-09-2021, 11:10 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: You have no dignity left at this point. I take that back, you have whatever dignity there is, whatever remains being associated with the Democratic party these days. Oh well, we'll get to see how much integrity and character that's left and how much of the Democratic party is worth saving, preserving and carrying onward vs letting go of and leaving behind to die along with most of the West.

Hmmm...

The crisis issues to me seem to be COVID, the economy, racism, red violence (which is sort of racism again) and global warming.  A trigger comes along, the government undergoes regeneracy and gets focused on solving the crisis problems.  The conservative faction which favors the status quo and thus staying with the structure that doesn't solve the problems fades.  The progressive faction which solves the problems gets to remake the culture to incorporate the solutions.  Build infrastructure.  Rinse.  Repeat with new issues.

Now you are just incapable of seeing that.  It seems silly to try to help you see it.  You have adequately demonstrated your stubborn commitment to the old perspective.  COVID doesn't seem to induce the Hiroshima class shock it takes to make people rethink their values.  They are only people after all.  So what if COVID minus the precautions causes death?  The oppression doesn't matter?  Your commitment to the old culture and obsession with violence doesn't let you see it.

But that is turning theory in a nutshell, and applying it to our current situation is clear enough.

[pbrower2a]

(02-09-2021, 11:10 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(02-05-2021, 08:21 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: If the Democratic Party has been slow to catch on to Millennial values, the Republican Party seems to have neglected those values completely. The Millennial Generation, as one can expect of a Civic generation, has tolerance of hierarchy and conformity only for such purposes as saving society from a clear and present danger such as the Confederacy, the Third Reich, the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, or Stalinism. Civic generations do not stand for shaky injustice. Let us remember that the role of the GI generation in the demise of segregationist politics; African-Americans who had fought the Jew-baiting racists of the Third Reich could turn against the Klan, and by the mid-1960's, white GI's generally buckled to the calls for civil rights for Southern blacks. Millennial values do not include acquiescence to policies that have been tried and found to not serve their stated purpose.  "Trickle-down" economics have served only economic elites.

You have no dignity left at this point. I take that back, you have whatever dignity there is, whatever remains being associated with the Democratic party these days. Oh well, we'll get to see how much integrity and character that's left and how much of the Democratic party is worth saving, preserving and carrying onward vs letting go of and leaving behind to die along with most of the West.

In case you have figured that I am in a ward for AIDS, terminal cancer, kidney failure, cirrhosis, or third-degree burns, then you are completely wrong. I am bored, broke, and lonely, part of which is my fault. I am not a country music fan, but in view of the depressive quality of most country lyrics, "Bored, Broke, and Lonely" sounds like a good title for a country-music song. Well, Nashville is about 470 miles away, and it is supposedly a good place to start over even if it is in Tennessee.  Maybe one great song lyric could solve all my economic problems with a nice, active retirement. (A new Christmas carol might do much the same, as there hasn't been a good new one in America since, paradoxically, Feliz Navidad). 

...It is the Republican Party that needs to rediscover virtues other than economic gain, bureaucratic power, sybaritic indulgence, social hierarchy, crony capitalism, ethnic or sectarian enmity, a narrow culture, and overt superstition. Democrats may not yet have all the answers, but they have ruled out most of the wrong answers that I associate with Donald Trump... and you, Classic X'er. What is it with the anger? Anger kills.

[David Horn]

(02-09-2021, 10:25 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: I'm sorry dude but sanity isn't going to return until the Democratic party is eliminated one way or another at this point. It's only going to get worse for you and the Democratic party as a whole and a small  remnant of the GOP from here on.

You Trumpist types are a rump of the GOP that will have a real problem getting power back -- even using voter suppression tactics and gerrymandering. In short, enough Republicans have moved away from MAGA that the only places it will be supported are already far to the right (i.e. more Lauren Boeberts and Marjorie Taylor Greenes in fewer MAGA districts).  Tolerance is waning fast.