Donald Trump: polls of approval and favorability

[David Horn]

(02-17-2021, 11:31 AM)beechnut79 Wrote:

(02-17-2021, 11:26 AM)David Horn Wrote: "You get what you pay for" is just as true today as ever.

Not in all cases. You can get a cut of steak for, say, $17 at a modest restaurant while that very same cut at a trendy location can set you back $30 or more.

You might pay more for ambiance, and there are grades of steak: USDA Good (cheap and below sit-down restaurant quality), Choice (found at mid-priced sit-downs) and Prime (excellent). Aging adds to the price, and some varieties, like Kobe beef, are just outrageously expensive for a reason. I've had Kobe beef one time (not on my dime) and found it amazing.

[Eric the Green]

I think in many cases, people charge what they can get away with.

[David Horn]

(02-17-2021, 12:30 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: I think in many cases, people charge what they can get away with.

I'm not much of a meat eater, so I'm also a poor source, but I can see the reason for the cost.  Kobe cattle are raised on rice and beer primarily, and massaged regularly to keep them relaxed. Let's just say they are fully relaxed at slaughter, and leave it at that.  Needless to say, the intense human interaction has a real cost, so the beef is pricey. You can judge the value, but the price makes sense.

[pbrower2a]

I have some heated arguments with "COVID-32" (get it?) and Einzige. Classic X'er endorses a plutocratic hierarchy having sharp tinges of racism and religious bigotry in which "useless" people by his criteria are cast out to suffer from exposure (freezing in an American winter in most of the country, heatstroke in the summer), and either street crime, drugs, or outright hunger at all times. The rest of American humanity, which one can presume is largely white, gets to enjoy either ostentatious indulgence if part of the economic elite or bare survival while being treated like livestock but knowing well enough to accept the abuse and degradation as charity. Because the elites metaphorically crack the whip people work hard enough and long enough with complete obedience to avoid starvation and homelessness. Food may be unpalatable and sparse; housing may be crowded slums ("twelve in  one room in A-may-REE-caw!"  But there is hope, if not for the juvenile delinquents unless they clean up their acts.   

Classic X'er is an economic sadist like the late Rush Limbaugh. Einzige is a Marxist fool.

[Einzige]

And what you endorse is the slow death of the proletariat via class compromise and Keynesian masturbatory cope. You want "a bourgeoisie without a proletariat".

Voting for the Democratic Party is absolutely useless. There is a whole hidden history of anti-labor fuckery even from "progressive" Democrats - FDR, for example, deliberately placed all those Army bases constructed in the mid 30s in the South, the least labor friendly region of the country. He also borrowed the rationale for Social Security from the Townsend Plan - that contented seniors would be unlikely to overturn the social order. Truman threatened to draft striking railroad workers. LBJ and the capitalist unions of the AFL-CIO supported 'Nam. American liberals are garbage, not so much because they are compromises- they are not radical at all - but because their endorsed form of capitalism is more nefarious.

You are useless to the working class. And in the event of revolution you and Classic X would set your differences aside and rally to the standard of the owning class.

[pbrower2a]

(02-19-2021, 05:51 PM)Einzige Wrote: And what you endorse is the slow death of the proletariat via class compromise and Keynesian masturbatory cope. You want "a bourgeoisie without a proletariat".

Voting for the Democratic Party is absolutely useless. There is a whole hidden history of anti-labor fuckery even from "progressive" Democrats - FDR, for example, deliberately placed all those Army bases constructed in the mid 30s in the South, the least labor friendly region of the country.

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Also the poorest large region of the country. Also the weather had some cause; training bases in the North would have had problematic weather for at least four months out of the year due to snow interfering with military training. Southern pols wanted the bases because those would bring in soldiers with fat paychecks by the loval standard that might go into bars, restaurants, and dance halls.  

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Quote:He also borrowed the rationale for Social Security from the Townsend Plan - that contented seniors would be unlikely to overturn the social order. Truman threatened to draft striking railroad workers. LBJ and the capitalist unions of the AFL-CIO supported 'Nam.

Have you ever thought that your much-beloved proletariat made a deal with the deal possible involving Big Business and the political system, that in return for the right to collective bargaining (the real benefit of union contracts? It keeps employers from seeking and exploiting the bargaining weaknesses of employees) that allowed a living wage by the standards of the 1930's (not too difficult, as real estate was incredibly cheap back then). It also prevents a Marxist revolution that capitalists dread because capitalists, large farmers, and landlords would be dispossessed and either exiled or murdered. Workers get a stake jn the System through consumerism, which is far safer for everyone than a revolution that can either fail (with mass executions of workers who do not 'voluntarily' choose permanent, hereditary serfdom only slightly more advanced formally than what Spartacus rebelled against in the penultimate Crisis Era (the Servile Wars) of the Roman Republic.  Failure of a proletarian revolution  would end perhaps with machi8ne-gun fire instead of crucifixions;  on the other hand, its  success might lead to the fraud that was the Soviet Union (the State becomes one giant plantation with the workers as serfs of the State. A proletarian revolution that fails can lead to fascist terror.  
 
  As has been noted, Karl Marx made the appeal "Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!" The workable compromise is that workers have sofas, stoves, cars, two weeks paid vacation, and the prospect of an inexpensive education for their kids should their kids have talent.  Such was so in America until the 1980's, at which time the capitalist class and their politicians chose to pay people in debt instead of wages while eviscerating unions.
.... As for the AFL-CIO supporting the war in Vietnam... blunders happen. American leadership thought that suppressing Communism in Vietnam would be far easier than it was. Blunders must first seduce.  
   
          

Quote:American liberals are garbage, not so much because they are compromises- they are not radical at all - but because their endorsed form of capitalism is more nefarious.You are useless to the working class. And in the event of revolution you and Classic X would set your differences aside and rally to the standard of the owning class.

Classic X'er sounds like the sort who would gladly take up a machine gun to mow down people that a fascist clique orders him to mow down.

[Classic-Xer]

(02-19-2021, 05:18 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: I have some heated arguments with "COVID-32" (get it?) and Einzige. Classic X'er endorses a plutocratic hierarchy having sharp tinges of racism and religious bigotry in which "useless" people by his criteria are cast out to suffer from exposure (freezing in an American winter in most of the country, heatstroke in the summer), and either street crime, drugs, or outright hunger at all times. The rest of American humanity, which one can presume is largely white, gets to enjoy either ostentatious indulgence if part of the economic elite or bare survival while being treated like livestock but knowing well enough to accept the abuse and degradation as charity. Because the elites metaphorically crack the whip people work hard enough and long enough with complete obedience to avoid starvation and homelessness. Food may be unpalatable and sparse; housing may be crowded slums ("twelve in  one room in A-may-REE-caw!"  But there is hope, if not for the juvenile delinquents unless they clean up their acts.   

Classic X'er is an economic sadist like the late Rush Limbaugh. Einzige is a Marxist fool.

You are endorsing/supporting a plutocratic hierarchy right now as you are accusing me of doing it. Wake up dude. The Democratic party has gone rogue/Woke.

[Classic-Xer]

(02-19-2021, 07:18 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Classic X'er sounds like the sort who would gladly take up a machine gun to mow down people that a fascist clique orders him to mow down.

I won't be taking orders from a fascist clique like the Wokes.

[Einzige]

The AFL-CIO didn't just support the Vietnam War. It supported the American Institute for Free Labor Development, a CIA front designed to undermine foreign labor unions in the Third World. Fuck the AFL-CIO and fuck business unionism.

People are tired of both conservatism and liberalism. Right-populism will be tried first; when that inevitably fails, expect the Red flag to fly again.

[Bob Butler 54]

(02-19-2021, 07:55 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: I won't be taking orders from a fascist clique like the Wokes.

I spent a bit looking up a definition of 'woke' and came up with "alert to injustice in society, especially racism".  This is about as opposite as one can come to a 'racist clique', as fascists are generally in favor of racism and violence favoring their own supposedly superior group.  I guess this is typical.  You redefine words like 'American' and 'racist' to mean whatever you want them to mean. indicating by that very use or the common words in ways incompatible with how most people use them that you don't think like most people.  You worldview is badly skewed.

Why not redefine your usage of words like 'fascist' and 'woke' too?  Just make it more flagrant that you are out of touch?

[Einzige]

There is absolutely a subsection of left-liberal capitalists using the very legitimate concerns of BLM  to cement Democratic Party dominance via wokeism and idpol, robbing it of revolutionary content

[pbrower2a]

(02-19-2021, 07:55 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(02-19-2021, 07:18 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Classic X'er sounds like the sort who would gladly take up a machine gun to mow down people that a fascist clique orders him to mow down.

I won't be taking orders from a fascist clique like the Wokes.

I'll take my orders from people who have no proclivity for killing, thank you. The only killers that I get along with bark or purr.

[pbrower2a]

(02-19-2021, 08:45 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(02-19-2021, 07:55 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: I won't be taking orders from a fascist clique like the Wokes.

I spent a bit looking up a definition of 'woke' and came up with "alert to injustice in society, especially racism".  This is about as opposite as one can come to a 'racist clique', as fascists are generally in favor of racism and violence favoring their own supposedly superior group.  I guess this is typical.  You redefine words like 'American' and 'racist' to mean whatever you want them to mean. indicating by that very use or the common words in ways incompatible with how most people use them that you don't think like most people.  You worldview is badly skewed.

Why not redefine your usage of words like 'fascist' and 'woke' too?  Just make it more flagrant that you are out of touch?

Like a typical fascist, commie, or cultist, Classic X'er uses Newspeak, the perverse language nominally English but that destroys the human faculty of communication by turning every word into a lie. Orwell got a rap from the Hard Left for attributing it to its idols Stalin and later Mao... but the Nazis used the technique in German. Words translated into English that sound benign mean something very different, and horrible, in the Nazi lexicon. For example, "protective custody" that someone sought as an escape from mob violence became incarceration as if one were a criminal... OK, in Nazi Germany, a Jew was a criminal by birth. "Special treatment" which on the surface suggests protection from typically meant summary execution. Resettlement in the East meant being shipped off not to what had for years been vibrant Jewish communities but instead consignment to death camps. This was in the service of the Final Solution of the Jewish Question... and we know what that means. 

Donald Trump gave plenty of warning that he would be a dreadful leader, and in my awareness of Orwell I could recognize Trump doing Newspeak, exploiting words to make them mean to listeners something very different from what he intended them to mean. Trump did the worst lies possible, the Orwellian distortion of words until they have no meaning other than what he wants them to mean.

[Classic-Xer]

(02-19-2021, 05:51 PM)Einzige Wrote: And what you endorse is the slow death of the proletariat via class compromise and Keynesian masturbatory cope. You want "a bourgeoisie without a proletariat".

Voting for the Democratic Party is absolutely useless. There is a whole hidden history of anti-labor fuckery even from "progressive" Democrats - FDR, for example, deliberately placed all those Army bases constructed in the mid 30s in the South, the least labor friendly region of the country. He also borrowed the rationale for Social Security from the Townsend Plan - that contented seniors would be unlikely to overturn the social order. Truman threatened to draft striking railroad workers. LBJ and the capitalist unions of the AFL-CIO supported 'Nam. American liberals are garbage, not so much because they are compromises- they are not radical at all - but because their endorsed form of capitalism is more nefarious.

You are useless to the working class. And in the event of revolution you and Classic X would set your differences aside and rally to the standard of the owning class.

Dude, I employed working class people for several years. Here's your problem, you have this silly notion in your head that this country is owned by a few when it's actually owned by millions of people these days. Right now, the Left is trying to flip the script and the America Right is well aware of of it. I hate to say it but 90% of what the Left is selling is bullshit that easily sold to half wits and idiots. The whole Yankee Republican vs Confederate Democrats ended around 160 years ago and the Democrats are still fighting it and trying to win. You and I see the same problem with the Democrats a long with everyone else who isn't a Democratic voter or a Biden voter these days. I wonder what the snowbirds who voted him think about all the new COVID problems that Biden's policies are creating for them now.

[Einzige]

(02-20-2021, 02:24 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(02-19-2021, 05:51 PM)Einzige Wrote: And what you endorse is the slow death of the proletariat via class compromise and Keynesian masturbatory cope. You want "a bourgeoisie without a proletariat".

Voting for the Democratic Party is absolutely useless. There is a whole hidden history of anti-labor fuckery even from "progressive" Democrats - FDR, for example, deliberately placed all those Army bases constructed in the mid 30s in the South, the least labor friendly region of the country. He also borrowed the rationale for Social Security from the Townsend Plan - that contented seniors would be unlikely to overturn the social order. Truman threatened to draft striking railroad workers. LBJ and the capitalist unions of the AFL-CIO supported 'Nam. American liberals are garbage, not so much because they are compromises- they are not radical at all - but because their endorsed form of capitalism is more nefarious.

You are useless to the working class. And in the event of revolution you and Classic X would set your differences aside and rally to the standard of the owning class.

Dude, I employed working class people for several years. Here's your problem, you have this silly notion in your head that this country is owned by a few when it's actually owned by millions of people these days. Right now, the Left is trying to flip the script and the America Right is well aware of of it. I hate to say it but 90% of what the Left is selling is bullshit that easily sold to half wits and idiots. The whole Yankee Republican vs Confederate Democrats ended around 160 years ago and the Democrats are still fighting it and trying to win. You and I see the same problem with the Democrats a long with everyone else who isn't a Democratic voter or a Biden voter these days. I wonder what the snowbirds who voted him think about all the new COVID problems that Biden's policies are creating for them now.

No, there is one proletariat. One bourgeoisie. And a scattering of petit-bourgeois and artisans and lumpen.

[Bob Butler 54]

(02-20-2021, 02:24 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Dude, I employed working class people for several years. Here's your problem, you have this silly notion in your head that this country is owned by a few when it's actually owned by millions of people these days. Right now, the Left is trying to flip the script and the America Right is well aware of of it. I hate to say it but 90% of what the Left is selling is bullshit that easily sold to half wits and idiots. The whole Yankee Republican vs Confederate Democrats ended around 160 years ago and the Democrats are still fighting it and trying to win. You and I see the same problem with the Democrats a long with everyone else who isn't a Democratic voter or a Biden voter these days. I wonder what the snowbirds who voted him think about all the new COVID problems that Biden's policies are creating for them now.

That is why I invoke the roundheads and cavaliers.  At one point the Republicans advocated for the industrial elites and abolitionists.  They were the progressives, seeking to move forward the Industrial Revolution.  The Democrats were centered on the rural power, were racists, were the conservatives.  With the southern strategy the elites and the racists got together.  With the elite money and the racist votes, it became possible to minimize benefits, weaken unions, ship jobs overseas, and in short shove it to the workers and minorities.

And some people are still buying into it.

The thing, though, with the current crisis is that the Democrats are eager to solve problems.  Hard to do in an unraveling.  The central focus of a crisis heart.  If the problems are the economy, COVID, systematic racism, global warming and red violence, it is better to solve the problems that exasperate them.  The practical lessons learned are locked into the culture in the high.  The old values fade.  Game over.

Thing is that you and Einzige are still wrapped up in violence.  Violence is the last resort.  If the problem can be solved using non violence, violence just doesn’t happen.  As a result you get so much meaningless verbiage.

[Einzige]

The Democrats aren't eager to do shit except to continue to extend the rule of Capital - not "the rich" but Capital, which is a system ordering and governing all human capacity on Earth today.

[Bob Butler 54]

(02-20-2021, 05:01 AM)Einzige Wrote: The Democrats aren't eager to do shit except to continue to extend the rule of Capital - not "the rich" but Capital, which is a system ordering and governing all human capacity on Earth today.

Is it telling that most people don't see the division of wealth as one of the crisis problems?  The economy is, and the division of wealth is part of it, but the key problem Marx saw is not considered that important now and the tool he saw as solving it is not seen as necessary.  The most severe problems faced by the culture are addressed in the crisis, and capitol is not among them.

I can see the division of wealth as being addressed in a future awakening or crisis, though likely through non violent means.  It is just that with the productivity increase, there isn't that much focus on it.

[Einzige]

(02-20-2021, 05:16 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(02-20-2021, 05:01 AM)Einzige Wrote: The Democrats aren't eager to do shit except to continue to extend the rule of Capital - not "the rich" but Capital, which is a system ordering and governing all human capacity on Earth today.

Is it telling that most people don't see the division of wealth as one of the crisis problems?  The economy is, and the division of wealth is part of it, but the key problem Marx saw is not considered that important now and the tool he saw as solving it is not seen as necessary.  The most severe problems faced by the culture are addressed in the crisis, and capitol is not among them.

I can see the division of wealth as being addressed in a future awakening or crisis, though likely through non violent means.  It is just that with the productivity increase, there isn't that much focus on it.

Capital is the crisis.

Example: the Nazi regime was empowered to defend the capital interests of German industry from domestic revolution. Everything else flowed from this.  

All these little problems are compounds of this single much larger issue. And again, this isn't as vulgar as "spread the wealth" in the sense of seizing bank accounts. It is about eliminating generalized production for exchange altogether.

[Bob Butler 54]

(02-20-2021, 05:21 AM)Einzige Wrote: Capital is the crisis.

Example: the Nazi regime was empowered to defend the capital interests of German industry from domestic revolution. Everything else flowed from this.  

All these little problems are compounds of this single much larger issue. And again, this isn't as vulgar as "spread the wealth" in the sense of seizing bank accounts. It is about eliminating generalized production for exchange altogether.

Marxist theory is based on capital and violence being two of the key concepts.  The owners of the means of production are pitted against the source of the labor using violence.  If you assume labor turns miraculously from revolutionaries into saints, fine.  Color me dubious.

From another perspective, let’s assume tribal thinking is the point of view.  You divide the world into us and them, develop xenophobia towards them, and use whatever means necessary to dominate them.

Marxism becomes one example of tribal thinking.  The owners of the means of production become them.  Laborers become us.  You work up all the bad aspects of them.  You try to use violence to eliminate them.

Nazi culture was the last crisis.  The Aryan was from their perspective us.  The Jew and the Slavs were them.  You worked up a hatred of them, then used violence to subjugate and eliminate them.

Now let’s go with the current crisis.  Systematic racism.  Check.  Whites us, minorities them.  Red Violence.  Check.  Reds against blues, whites against minorities.  Global warming.  Sorta check.  Those that care for the planet are us.  Those who care more for immediate profit are them.  COVID.  Shouldn’t match unless you call the bug them.  One side of the problem is entirely impersonal.  The economy.  The immediate problem is caused by COVID, and does not mesh up well with tribal thinking perspective, but underneath the surface is biomes the elites versus the workers.  It is not the obvious and blatant problem, but is there.  There are non violent solutions.

Seemingly, every single problem cannot be pegged on tribal thinking.  Still, you see why the modern perspective confronts multiple problems.  By concentrating on one problem with one solution, you are just limiting your perspective.  That perspective has nothing to do with many modern problems.