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(01-14-2017, 09:56 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: In fact I woulr prefer that there were a Soviet Union with a Gorbachev-like leader than a post-Soviet world with someone with an admiration of the tsars for their opulence and the Brezhnev-era enforcers for their brutality.
As history proved, you can't get a Soviet Union with a Gorbachev like leader. The structure of the Soviet Union was dependent on repression from the top, and a leader who didn't use it would soon be out of power, one way or another. At best, it disintegrates, as it did; at worst, a coup restores Stalinism.
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(01-15-2017, 10:50 AM)David Horn Wrote: (01-14-2017, 09:00 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Reagan appeared to get pretty chummy with Gorbachev back in the day. It didn't hurt Reagan back then. Keep in mind, we were still a Cold War society back then. We watched the Berlin Wall come down and watched later on as the Soviet Union fell apart. Your advice would be more suitable for someone like Obama. Obama came in with the maximum already sitting in place and could only loose seats. Trump still has room to grow if he plays his cards right. How many Democrats played it safe and voted for Clinton instead of taking a chance on voting for Trump? I'd say a sizable portion stuck with Hilary that is available to support Trump.
Trump has a huge unfavorablity score for an entering President, and a big chunk of it is due to the people who are still saying WTF. I don't see that getting better, since he doesn't seem to get better. I don't see a wave of voters flocking to Trump who haven't done so already.
He may still win a second term, and he may get to derail the post-war social compact, but people like Warren and you will not like if it happens.
Obama already destroyed the postwar social compact. Returning to Reagan's America is not really an option any more.
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01-15-2017, 11:37 AM
(This post was last modified: 01-15-2017, 11:40 AM by Bob Butler 54.)
(01-15-2017, 11:15 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: (01-15-2017, 10:50 AM)David Horn Wrote: (01-14-2017, 09:00 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Reagan appeared to get pretty chummy with Gorbachev back in the day. It didn't hurt Reagan back then. Keep in mind, we were still a Cold War society back then. We watched the Berlin Wall come down and watched later on as the Soviet Union fell apart. Your advice would be more suitable for someone like Obama. Obama came in with the maximum already sitting in place and could only loose seats. Trump still has room to grow if he plays his cards right. How many Democrats played it safe and voted for Clinton instead of taking a chance on voting for Trump? I'd say a sizable portion stuck with Hilary that is available to support Trump.
Trump has a huge unfavorablity score for an entering President, and a big chunk of it is due to the people who are still saying WTF. I don't see that getting better, since he doesn't seem to get better. I don't see a wave of voters flocking to Trump who haven't done so already.
He may still win a second term, and he may get to derail the post-war social compact, but people like Warren and you will not like if it happens.
Obama already destroyed the postwar social compact. Returning to Reagan's America is not really an option any more.
Nor is returning to the time America was Great... the era of tax and spend liberalism. One way or another, what's coming will be significantly different from what came before.
My only quibble would be that the post war social contract grew out of the New Deal. It's arguable that it was Reagan who destroyed that. To what degree Obama upset Reagan's unravelling era scheme we'll have to see. Trump's campaign promises suggest he will push to reprise the usual Republican unravelling era stuff. That's what the red population seems to want to vote for. How much does he value his promises? I'm dubious, but we'll know more in a few months.
That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.
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01-15-2017, 11:58 AM
(This post was last modified: 01-15-2017, 12:05 PM by pbrower2a.)
(01-15-2017, 11:15 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: (01-15-2017, 10:50 AM)David Horn Wrote: (01-14-2017, 09:00 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Reagan appeared to get pretty chummy with Gorbachev back in the day. It didn't hurt Reagan back then. Keep in mind, we were still a Cold War society back then. We watched the Berlin Wall come down and watched later on as the Soviet Union fell apart. Your advice would be more suitable for someone like Obama. Obama came in with the maximum already sitting in place and could only loose seats. Trump still has room to grow if he plays his cards right. How many Democrats played it safe and voted for Clinton instead of taking a chance on voting for Trump? I'd say a sizable portion stuck with Hilary that is available to support Trump.
Trump has a huge unfavorablity score for an entering President, and a big chunk of it is due to the people who are still saying WTF. I don't see that getting better, since he doesn't seem to get better. I don't see a wave of voters flocking to Trump who haven't done so already.
He may still win a second term, and he may get to derail the post-war social compact, but people like Warren and you will not like if it happens.
Obama already destroyed the postwar social compact. Returning to Reagan's America is not really an option any more.
To the contrary: the foreign policy of President Obama is an extension of the Nixon-Reagan-Bush I-Clinton success. He made sure that those who do evil to Americans, whether pirates or terrorists, get caught or killed. His outreach to Iran (the US and Iranian navies were cooperating on the suppression of piracy off Somalia; Iran and the USA have a common interest in destroying ISIS on behalf of the Iraqi government) and Cuba (he wants America to be in a not-so-hostile position in the post-Castro era) are more pragmatic than ideological. He sought to extend the meaning of the term "Establishment" to include successful minorities. He refused to use the power of the Presidency for patronage. Obamacare? A belated effort to catch up with the rest of the industrialized world. Deficits may not have fully gone away while he was President, but they certainly went in the right direction. He privatized about everything that came under government ownership in the wake of the unwelcome "receivership socialism" that the Bush II economic meltdown necessitated.
It is Donald Trump who promises a big break with the American political tradition, one going back at least 85 years. Maybe he dares not undo the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but I can imagine him subordinating everything to the profit motive in the name of prosperity - including human rights, civil liberties, science, gender equity, and any official protection of the poor and helpless. This is a man who stamped the letter "C" for "Colored" on applications for rentals... for rejection. Christian values? His idea of Christianity is that the common man defers to the basest drives of the economic elites in return for rewards in the Afterlife.
He is a horrible person. One cannot get around this. He is a lying, vicious egoist in the extreme. He is the worst possible sort of political figure in a democratic system -- the demagogue who promises everything and then betrays his promises because the promises contradict. Unlike most of us who have had to develop some humanizing humility just to survive in a hierarchical world, he has not. He may have a little more polish than the juvenile delinquents that most high-school kids did everything to avoid, but he thinks much the same way. Most of those juvenile delinquents have either shed their worst tendencies to hold a job or have become career criminals now dead, incarcerated, or broken. Donald Trump has gotten away with abominable behavior from youth to old age. Old age does not mellow or mollify his type; harsh reality with its brutal consequences does that to most of us, you and me included.
Donald Trump reminds me more of the late mobster John "Dapper Don" Gotti (and mobsters maintain the juvenile-delinquent lifestyle as long as they can get away with it, which can be a lifetime if they don't end up incarcerated) than of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He's a bigger philanderer than either John F. Kennedy or Bill Clinton. I would not trust him if he ran on boilerplate liberal ideology. I expect to despise him much as many Cuban-Americans despise the late Fidel Castro.
After Donald Trump, Americans will have to rebuild the institutions that he rends, restart a benign foreign policy, and restore a sane and rational culture.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
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(01-15-2017, 11:37 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: (01-15-2017, 11:15 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: (01-15-2017, 10:50 AM)David Horn Wrote: (01-14-2017, 09:00 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Reagan appeared to get pretty chummy with Gorbachev back in the day. It didn't hurt Reagan back then. Keep in mind, we were still a Cold War society back then. We watched the Berlin Wall come down and watched later on as the Soviet Union fell apart. Your advice would be more suitable for someone like Obama. Obama came in with the maximum already sitting in place and could only loose seats. Trump still has room to grow if he plays his cards right. How many Democrats played it safe and voted for Clinton instead of taking a chance on voting for Trump? I'd say a sizable portion stuck with Hilary that is available to support Trump.
Trump has a huge unfavorablity score for an entering President, and a big chunk of it is due to the people who are still saying WTF. I don't see that getting better, since he doesn't seem to get better. I don't see a wave of voters flocking to Trump who haven't done so already.
He may still win a second term, and he may get to derail the post-war social compact, but people like Warren and you will not like if it happens.
Obama already destroyed the postwar social compact. Returning to Reagan's America is not really an option any more.
Nor is returning to the time America was Great... the era of tax and spend liberalism.
You mean the time when we were losing the Vietnam war? Agreed that return to that isn't really an option either.
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 my 2 yr old Niece/yr old Nephew 2020
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01-16-2017, 07:16 AM
(This post was last modified: 01-16-2017, 07:25 AM by Eric the Green.)
(01-15-2017, 11:15 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: (01-15-2017, 10:50 AM)David Horn Wrote: (01-14-2017, 09:00 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Reagan appeared to get pretty chummy with Gorbachev back in the day. It didn't hurt Reagan back then. Keep in mind, we were still a Cold War society back then. We watched the Berlin Wall come down and watched later on as the Soviet Union fell apart. Your advice would be more suitable for someone like Obama. Obama came in with the maximum already sitting in place and could only loose seats. Trump still has room to grow if he plays his cards right. How many Democrats played it safe and voted for Clinton instead of taking a chance on voting for Trump? I'd say a sizable portion stuck with Hilary that is available to support Trump.
Trump has a huge unfavorablity score for an entering President, and a big chunk of it is due to the people who are still saying WTF. I don't see that getting better, since he doesn't seem to get better. I don't see a wave of voters flocking to Trump who haven't done so already.
He may still win a second term, and he may get to derail the post-war social compact, but people like Warren and you will not like if it happens.
Obama already destroyed the postwar social compact. Returning to Reagan's America is not really an option any more.
Obama made a few changes, but most were blocked by the Republicans. There's no "social compact" that he destroyed. He tried to unify America, but the Republicans would not agree.
Obama said he wanted to "restore" the social compact. That meant a country in which the people care about each other, and have a sense of their responsibility to the nation and society, not just to themselves. This was the post-war social compact, created during the previous 4T.
Republicans and libertarians insist that peoples' only responsibility is to themselves, and that self-reliance is the only virtue. They are dead wrong.
The bosses must be regulated and taxed. They cannot be trusted to do the right thing, in the name of "freedom" as the Republicans insist.
Yet, Republicans insist that free enterprise and work requires a prod, and that workers cannot be trusted: that there must be a monetary incentive or penalty before people will be willing to provide what society needs. That prod is the penalty of homelessness and starvation if you don't get or have money.
I don't see that's any different from the prod on the bosses that they must pay some taxes and obey regulations of be penalized, so that they serve society and not just themselves.
Conservatives today can't see these facts.
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(01-15-2017, 05:04 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: You mean the time when we were losing the Vietnam war? Agreed that return to that isn't really an option either.
I see the economic and foreign policy aspects as not linked.
The GIs came out of World War II thinking it necessary to block the expansion of autocratic powers early, to not let them get started on their expansion. Given how Hitler started, this seemed like a real lesson learned. Thus, the Domino Theory. They wanted to block even the smallest advance of communism, regardless of how poor the government that they were defending, with not a lot of concern on whether they had a clear path to victory. LBJ committed large numbers of troops to Vietnam knowing they wouldn't be enough if the opposition switched to insurgent tactics. He knew this could destroy is popularity. He had bought into the Domino Theory so much that he committed anyway.
After Vietnam, the Domino Theory was followed less blatantly. The Republicans still rattled sabers convincingly, but they avoided shooting wars. The Democrats became wary of quagmires. It worked, at least on a surface level. Russia and China aren't as communist anymore. There is this triumph of robber baron capitalism. I can thoroughly agree that going back to a blind absolute mid 20th Century Domino Theory would be very unlikely, but we're still spending a ton on the military, and we're still backing alliances blocking Russian and Chinese expansion. The Domino Theory isn't entirely dead.
I don't see us immune from getting caught up in another quagmire. Bush 43 got us involved in insurgent wars, and given the economic situation he could not have committed enough troops for a clear victory even if he had wanted to. There seems to be a desire to punish / destroy / contain Middle Eastern factions that export terror to the west, but no desire to put enough of our own boots on the ground to attempt a true victory. As those who live in the Middle East are more concerned with their own problems than terrorism in the West, it has proven essentially impossible to fight terror exporters via local proxies.
Trump talked as if he knew how to make military problems go away, that he knew more than the generals, that he could use our military might to win short victorious wars. I'm dubious. Typical Trump? So much empty talk? I hope so.
Anyway, yes, we can't step back into yesterday's military situations any more than we could step back into yesterday's economics.
That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.
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(01-15-2017, 11:15 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: (01-15-2017, 10:50 AM)David Horn Wrote: (01-14-2017, 09:00 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Reagan appeared to get pretty chummy with Gorbachev back in the day. It didn't hurt Reagan back then. Keep in mind, we were still a Cold War society back then. We watched the Berlin Wall come down and watched later on as the Soviet Union fell apart. Your advice would be more suitable for someone like Obama. Obama came in with the maximum already sitting in place and could only loose seats. Trump still has room to grow if he plays his cards right. How many Democrats played it safe and voted for Clinton instead of taking a chance on voting for Trump? I'd say a sizable portion stuck with Hilary that is available to support Trump.
Trump has a huge unfavorablity score for an entering President, and a big chunk of it is due to the people who are still saying WTF. I don't see that getting better, since he doesn't seem to get better. I don't see a wave of voters flocking to Trump who haven't done so already.
He may still win a second term, and he may get to derail the post-war social compact, but people like Warren and you will not like if it happens.
Obama already destroyed the postwar social compact. Returning to Reagan's America is not really an option any more.
Oh? And how is the Reagan era indicative of the post-WWII social compact? He started the road-to-hell by drastically cutting taxes on the rich, and triggering the massive wealth shift we've seen since.
Intelligence is not knowledge and knowledge is not wisdom, but they all play well together.
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01-16-2017, 03:42 PM
(This post was last modified: 01-16-2017, 03:44 PM by Mikebert.)
(01-14-2017, 09:00 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Reagan appeared to get pretty chummy with Gorbachev back in the day. It didn't hurt Reagan back then. Keep in mind, we were still a Cold War society back then.
Your advice would be more suitable for someone like Obama.
Trump still has room to grow if he plays his cards right.
Demanding that Gorbachev to "tear down this wall" after joking about nuking his country does seem to be very chummy to me. And then there the very poor relationship between their wives. I'm sure Ron got an earful about Raisa.
Obama did what I suggested. Moving a notch toward universal health care is something Democrats have had one their bucket list since the 1940's.
Not if he antagonizes Republicans. Republicans have had an antipathy towards the Russkies since before I was born. It's not all going to evaporate simply because a guy they initially opposed wants it to.
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Here's an irony (not that I haven't related it before): I am shocked that I am to the Right of the Republican President-Elect on foreign policy. I am satisfied with the legacy of Nixon, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Obama. Such may be beyond recovery in 2021.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
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01-16-2017, 06:12 PM
(This post was last modified: 01-16-2017, 06:30 PM by Classic-Xer.)
(01-16-2017, 03:42 PM)Mikebert Wrote: (01-14-2017, 09:00 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Reagan appeared to get pretty chummy with Gorbachev back in the day. It didn't hurt Reagan back then. Keep in mind, we were still a Cold War society back then.
Your advice would be more suitable for someone like Obama.
Trump still has room to grow if he plays his cards right.
Demanding that Gorbachev to "tear down this wall" after joking about nuking his country does seem to be very chummy to me. And then there the very poor relationship between their wives. I'm sure Ron got an earful about Raisa.
Obama did what I suggested. Moving a notch toward universal health care is something Democrats have had one their bucket list since the 1940's.
Not if he antagonizes Republicans. Republicans have had an antipathy towards the Russkies since before I was born. It's not all going to evaporate simply because a guy they initially opposed wants it to.
True, we don't trust/think that highly of the Russians and we view them as more of an adversary than a friend. How many times have you taken a position on something that happened during the Reagan years that I associated as being favorable to a Russian or advance of communism in general at that time? I'm not exactly sure what you think you have to gain from always placing yourself on the wrong side of American history or America in general. I won't pledge allegiance to a foreign flag and bow down and accept a watered down/weakened version that you might view as being favorable to you therefore agreeable to those you have the most influence over. How large was the American population during the 1940's? How large was the average American family during the 40's? How easy was it for people to get here during the 40's? What was our role as a world leader/super power during the 1940's? Would you agree that lots of stuff has changed with the world and with America since the 1940's? I'm sure Ron was good at ignoring Nancy's petty qualms with Gorby's wife while seeming interested in and supportive of her views.
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(01-16-2017, 05:31 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Here's an irony (not that I haven't related it before): I am shocked that I am to the Right of the Republican President-Elect on foreign policy. I am satisfied with the legacy of Nixon, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Obama. Such may be beyond recovery in 2021.
Me too, I think.... Not that I cared for the policies of the other Republicans too much, but I find myself worried about the Drumpf's eagerness to harm our relations with our allies and embrace our enemies.
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(01-17-2017, 02:12 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: ... however unfortunately most on the Right have been duped by the faux "Right" to believe in some sort of Donaldus Maximus notion. Donald will fix everything. He will Make America Great Again. He, the gold leafed sales puke, will use the Art of the Deal to fix our foreign policy problems and trade imbalances, and will overturn "8 years of hell" (according to a certain subset of Rightists). Now to be fair, the Obama years sucked a lot for Rightists. But what is now offered is not any better for real Rightists than it is for the Left. Everyone loses here.
Many people believe that the way to solve all political questions is to secure a combination of a politician with whom one agrees completely to whom one grants absolute power. That hero usually proves a sham.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
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01-18-2017, 10:26 AM
(This post was last modified: 01-18-2017, 10:27 AM by Anthony '58.)
(01-14-2017, 10:29 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: (01-14-2017, 08:59 AM)Anthony Wrote: (01-10-2017, 07:49 PM)Bronsin Wrote: Oh I'm not wishing for it. I'm just saying the Dems got slaughtered in the last 2 mid-terms, and I expect that to continue because their voters only turn out for the big ticket elections. Not enough of them care about local elections to make a serious run at anything.
And worse yet, the map of Senate seats up for re-election in 2018 is absolutely brutal for the Democrats, who could very well lose the filibuster if the map holds up.
If they do lose the filibuster, the Republicans will go full retard: The income tax will get replaced with a national sales tax, EMTALA will be repealed, there will be a national right-to-work law, Social Security and Medicare will be privatized, and many other things that will touch off a wave of mass emigration that will ensure the Republicans' domination of the country virtually in perpetuity.
You paint such a rosy picture. Sadly, I suspect you're not entirely correct. Would be great, though.
In politics, as in Dantean allegory, everything relates to everything else - and the expulsion of the illegal aliens relates to getting other blue constituencies to leave the country. If the illegals are kicked out, who would be "recruited" to take their place as lettuce pickers in California's Central Valley, stall-muckers on Kentucky horse farms, and so on? Answer: African-Americans, after the latter have been priced out of the cities by the relentless campaign of gentrefaction - my personal term for it, to make it sound like "putrefaction" - that is pretty much complete in San Francisco, New York City, Boston, and Seattle, and will soon spread to other cities, with Ben "Dathan" Carson (anyone who has ever seen The Ten Commandments will know what I mean by that) doing all he can to accelerate it as the new HUD secretary. These righties are thinking BIG: They want to roll back not only the Great Society and even the New Deal, but also the Great Migration of blacks to the urban North that began with the outbreak of World War I in Europe in 1914, and even the circa-1900 labor reforms and antitrust legislation.
But rather than revert to becoming de-facto slaves once again, the blacks will emigrate en masse - and just about every other day I read a new Marcus Garvey-like "Back To Africa" blog on facebook.
And a ratcheting up of muscular evangelicalism will be enough to make most Jews want to exercise their rights under the Law Of Return.
Yes, Slobodan Milosevic's Yugoslavia - it can happen here.
"These, and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation" - Justice David Brewer, Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States, 1892
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(01-29-2017, 01:44 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: ![[Image: 16265709_10154100685725493_3793743487344...e=591CE493]](https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-0/p480x480/16265709_10154100685725493_3793743487344431690_n.png?oh=161ae8ae1ed8bb5a01ba219b0faecdfe&oe=591CE493)
Ahhh... A bit of blue propaganda that isn't demonizing...
Sanctifying?
That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.
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