America is a sick society

[Eric the Green]

Sexual misconduct is not the possession of one political party, that's for sure.

[John J. Xenakis]

(11-18-2017, 09:49 PM)gabrielle Wrote: > Maybe it took a rapist, woman assaulting Republican becoming
> president to get the Democrats to own up to the wolves in their
> own midst.

Hahahaha!! That's funny!

Trump isn't a rapist. Clinton is. Rapists are allowed to
become president only in the Democratic party.

[gabrielle]

(11-18-2017, 10:53 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote:

(11-18-2017, 09:49 PM)gabrielle Wrote: >   Maybe it took a rapist, woman assaulting Republican becoming
>   president to get the Democrats to own up to the wolves in their
>   own midst.  

Hahahaha!!  That's funny!

Trump isn't a rapist.  Clinton is.  Rapists are allowed to
become president only in the Democratic party.

Well, neither one of them have been convicted of rape in a court of law.  But they both have had multiple accusations of rape and sexual assault leveled at them.  And Trump has been caught on audio boasting of sexual assault.

Why are you willing to believe Clinton's accusers but not Trump's?

[John J. Xenakis]

(11-18-2017, 11:35 PM)gabrielle Wrote:

(11-18-2017, 10:53 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote:

(11-18-2017, 09:49 PM)gabrielle Wrote: >   Maybe it took a rapist, woman assaulting Republican becoming
>   president to get the Democrats to own up to the wolves in their
>   own midst.  

Hahahaha!!  That's funny!

Trump isn't a rapist.  Clinton is.  Rapists are allowed to
become president only in the Democratic party.

Well, neither one of them have been convicted of rape in a court of law.  But they both have had multiple accusations of rape and sexual assault leveled at them.  And Trump has been caught on audio boasting of sexual assault.

Why are you willing to believe Clinton's accusers but not Trump's?

https://www.snopes.com/2016/06/23/donald...e-lawsuit/

[gabrielle]

(11-18-2017, 11:48 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote:

(11-18-2017, 11:35 PM)gabrielle Wrote:

(11-18-2017, 10:53 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote:

(11-18-2017, 09:49 PM)gabrielle Wrote: >   Maybe it took a rapist, woman assaulting Republican becoming
>   president to get the Democrats to own up to the wolves in their
>   own midst.  

Hahahaha!!  That's funny!

Trump isn't a rapist.  Clinton is.  Rapists are allowed to
become president only in the Democratic party.

Well, neither one of them have been convicted of rape in a court of law.  But they both have had multiple accusations of rape and sexual assault leveled at them.  And Trump has been caught on audio boasting of sexual assault.

Why are you willing to believe Clinton's accusers but not Trump's?

https://www.snopes.com/2016/06/23/donald...e-lawsuit/

From what I had read, and this snopes post seems to confirm, she dropped the case because she had received threats on her life.  That doesn't disprove anything, it just makes it more horrible if it is actually true.  

Quote:“Johnson” had previously filed forms asking to be let off the hook for the costs of the lawsuit, claiming she had only $300 to her name … such an allowance — known as in forma paupers — is only given in civil rights cases in California, and the judge ruled that she “failed to state a claim for relief” on a civil rights basis, even though she “utilized the form provided by the Central District of California for civil actions.”

It sounds like she is quite destitute and powerless.

[John J. Xenakis]

Well, believe what you want, but if there were even an iota of truth
to the accusations then the NY Times, Washington Post, NBC News, the
BBC, and Maxine Waters would be all over it.

[pbrower2a]

Except for having the sexual morals of an alley cat, Clinton was a fine President. That was the problem.

[John J. Xenakis]

(11-19-2017, 09:08 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: > Except for having the sexual morals of an alley cat, Clinton was a
> fine President. That was the problem.

I don't disagree with that.

[gabrielle]

(11-19-2017, 08:54 AM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: Well, believe what you want, but if there were even an iota of truth
to the accusations then the NY Times, Washington Post, NBC News, the
BBC, and Maxine Waters would be all over it.

Well, it would be hard to prove anything when you can't locate the person involved, for whatever reason.  So that one's rather nebulous, it's true.

But there has been at least one other rape accusation, and numerous accusations of sexual assault or harassment.

Quote:During a court deposition, Ivana Trump—Donald's first wife and mother to Eric, Donald Jr. and Ivanka—accused the president of raping her in 1989. The private account was described in former Newsweek reporter Harry Hurt III’s 1993 book, Lost Tycoon. It details the alleged "violent assault," in which Trump pulled out fistfuls of his ex-wife’s hair after receiving a painful operation on his scalp.

"He jams his penis inside her for the first time in more than sixteen months," Hurt wrote. "Ivana is terrified.… According to versions she repeats to some of her closest confidants, 'he raped me.'"

Ivana walked back her allegations against Trump after his lawyers insisted she write the following statement at the beginning of her book, according to The New York Times: "During a deposition given by me in connection with my matrimonial case, I stated that my husband had raped me. I referred to this as a 'rape,' but I do not want my words to be interpreted in a literal or criminal sense."

  
http://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-rap...ore-713531

And there is Donald Trump's own words, which indicate a proclivity for forcing himself on women:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-el...do-n662116

[gabrielle]

(11-19-2017, 09:08 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Except for having the sexual morals of an alley cat, Clinton was a fine President. That was the problem.

I didn't like him at the time (my first time voting in a presidential election) and didn't vote for him, he seemed to me like a stereotype of a sleazy used car salesman.  He turned out to be a pretty decent president, but I guess my 21 year old self was right when I sensed his moral character.

[pbrower2a]

Nobody should be surprised that evangelical voters are sticking with the GOP.

I’ve been watching evangelical voting behavior since I worked for Paul Weyrich’s Free Congress Foundation in the 1980s, and I’ve come to believe that, in most cases (though certainly not all), white evangelicals get their religion from their politics, not their politics from their religion.

That is, many evangelicals are first and foremost political conservatives drawn to a church (or a pastor) that confirms their worldviews and, in turn, their political views.

They gravitate to evangelical, fundamentalist and Pentecostal churches that are spread across the American landscape, particularly in rural and small-town America, because those churches hold views about the Bible and human behavior that are traditional rather than pragmatic. Not surprisingly, most of those church members are politically conservative, particularly on social/cultural issues but increasingly also on the role of government.

There are, to be sure, socially and economically liberal evangelicals, and they gravitate to progressive churches or to groups like the Sojourners, a social justice evangelical group that looks at the exact same scripture as Jerry Fallwell Jr. and Pat Robertson but emphasizes very different values and takes very different political positions.

While the Falwells and Roberstons focus primarily on abortion, same-sex marriage and transgender rights, Jim Wallis of the Sojourners focuses on the poor and those marginalized by society. All are “evangelicals,” but they have very different concerns and agendas.

Of course, the tendency to affiliate with religious institutions that are consistent with one’s political views and priorities isn’t limited to evangelicals. Most people of faith pick a religion, a denomination, a particular house of worship, a clergyman and a level of observance that is consistent with their world view – and therefore with their core political beliefs.

You aren’t going to find very many political conservatives in Reform and Reconstructionist synagogues, just as you aren’t going to find many extremely liberal Hasidic Jews or pragmatists who attend fundamentalist churches.

.......

If Moore does win – and he is more likely than not to defeat Democrat Doug Jones – it will be because white evangelicals find his politics more important than his morality.

from the (Stuart) Rothenberg Report

[beechnut79]

(11-19-2017, 09:08 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Except for having the sexual morals of an alley cat, Clinton was a fine President. That was the problem.

But that proved to be the case with Kennedy as well, didn't it? Had read that if he had lived to run again in 1964 his sexual escapades would have been an issue.

[rds]

(11-29-2017, 10:01 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Nobody should be surprised that evangelical voters are sticking with the GOP.

.....

If Moore does win – and he is more likely than not to defeat Democrat Doug Jones – it will be because white evangelicals find his politics more important than his morality.

from the (Stuart) Rothenberg Report

I predict he will win as the Evangelicals are so eager to bring about the Apocalypse they can taste it.  They're looking for to the day when the dead sinners will live, and the live sinners will die.  It's an enormous mass delusion playing out in real time.

[pbrower2a]

(11-29-2017, 03:23 PM)rds Wrote:

(11-29-2017, 10:01 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Nobody should be surprised that evangelical voters are sticking with the GOP.

.....

If Moore does win – and he is more likely than not to defeat Democrat Doug Jones – it will be because white evangelicals find his politics more important than his morality.

from the (Stuart) Rothenberg Report

I predict he will win as the Evangelicals are so eager to bring about the Apocalypse they can taste it.  They're looking for to the day when the dead sinners will live, and the live sinners will die.  It's an enormous mass delusion playing out in real time.

Such an ideology would bring about the utter defeat of the America that starts such an Apocalypse.  But if you thought that Right-wing evangelicals, fundamentalists, and Pentecostals had any great moral values, Rothenberg should have disabused you of such a thought.

[Eric the Green]

Author Robert Kaplan answers questions from readers

My thoughts: The parochial, provincial, insular character of red America was revealed to Robert Kaplan on his tour of America, as reported in a PBS Newshour interview. It makes clear to me again how the red-state Trump voters have created their own suffering. It's the very anti-globalist, narrow-minded, pro-free market, anti-socialist, anti-diversity policies they have voted for for decades that keep them in decline, while the coasts and the university towns that are connected to the world thrive. And yet they keep voting to keep themselves in pain and in decline. In voting for Trump, the towns in the heartland have voted to make themselves even MORE cut off from the world, through erecting immigration and tariff barriers and empowering an American administration that encourages the rejection of knowledge and the understanding of other peoples. It is just the opposite course Kaplan says they need to take in order to recover. Can they wake up? Or must they be dragged into a better future through political victory OVER them?

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/earnin...-questions

(includes video)

(transcript starting half way through)

Caroline Walker:

You write about the growing divide between city states and rural areas and cities that have not adjusted to the global economy.

Do you have any thoughts about how to bridge this growing divide?

Robert Kaplan:

It was stunning, what I saw.

Outside of the two coasts, outside of the university towns and college towns, and outside of a few, a smattering of state capitals, which are doing very well, much of America are towns of 20,000, 30,000 people with shelled-out storefronts, nobody on the Main Street, people having lost all hope.

This book was written and researched before the last election, before the campaign even began for the last election. And I saw a heartland which was economically and socially devastated.

Jeffrey Brown:

And how does that play into what then followed in the election?

Robert Kaplan:

And then all I could think about is, how to bridge the divide is, we can't go backward, we can only go forward, because the only future is global.

You have to get more of these places hooked into the global economy. Like, I'm traveling along the Ohio River, and I see one devastated town after another. But then I get to Marietta, Ohio, which is a tiny college, but it has students from dozens of countries. It's very highly rated. And it's part of the global world.

Suddenly, I'm there, and then I leave it again.

Jeffrey Brown:

OK, let's go to one more question.

Brandon Irwin:

Mr. Kaplan, you say in the book, "Americans, I find more and more each day as I travel, do not want to know the details about foreign policy."

Is this disconnect with foreign policy replicated around the world?

Jeffrey Brown:

You do — we should say you travel all over. You have written about many other parts of the world.

Robert Kaplan:

Yes, I do. Yes, I have got reported from 100 countries.

And in most, but it's — you only see it replicated in large, massive countries, continental-size, like the United States, where there's so much going on internally, that the outside world seems almost to disappear in a way.

But in many — Europe is mainly small countries, and even the biggest countries is small by our standards. But, in Europe, in Africa and the Middle East, people are much more connected to world events, I find, than in the United States.

It's almost as if you know intellectually that every place in the U.S. — the Oklahoma Panhandle has agricultural ties with cities in China and everywhere. You know all this intellectually, but when you actually see it, and drive across it, the continent is so big and variegated, that the rest of the world seems abstract almost.

[Ragnarök_62]

(10-04-2018, 11:18 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Author Robert Kaplan answers questions from readers

My thoughts: The parochial, provincial, insular character of red America was revealed to Robert Kaplan on his tour of America, as reported in a PBS Newshour interview. It makes clear to me again how the red-state Trump voters have created their own suffering. It's the very anti-globalist, narrow-minded, pro-free market, anti-socialist, anti-diversity policies they have voted for for decades that keep them in decline, while the coasts and the university towns that are connected to the world thrive. And yet they keep voting to keep themselves in pain and in decline. In voting for Trump, the towns in the heartland have voted to make themselves even MORE cut off from the world, through erecting immigration and tariff barriers and empowering an American administration that encourages the rejection of knowledge and the understanding of other peoples. It is just the opposite course Kaplan says they need to take in order to recover. Can they wake up? Or must they be dragged into a better future through political victory OVER them?




g divide?

Robert Kaplan:

It was stunning, what I saw.

Outside of the two coasts, outside of the university towns and college towns, and outside of a few, a smattering of state capitals, which are doing very well, much of America are towns of 20,000, 30,000 people with shelled-out storefronts, nobody on the Main Street, people having lost all hope.

This book was written and researched before the last election, before the campaign even began for the last election. And I saw a heartland which was economically and socially devastated.

Jeffrey Brown:

And how does that play into what then followed in the election?

Robert Kaplan:

And then all I could think about is, how to bridge the divide is, we can't go backward, we can only go forward, because the only future is global.

You have to get more of these places hooked into the global economy. Like, I'm traveling along the Ohio River, and I see one devastated town after another. But then I get to Marietta, Ohio, which is a tiny college, but it has students from dozens of countries. It's very highly rated. And it's part of the global world.

Suddenly, I'm there, and then I leave it again.

Jeffrey Brown:

OK, let's go to one more question.

Brandon Irwin:

Mr. Kaplan, you say in the book, "Americans, I find more and more each day as I travel, do not want to know the details about foreign policy."

Is this disconnect with foreign policy replicated around the world?

Jeffrey Brown:

You do — we should say you travel all over. You have written about many other parts of the world.

Robert Kaplan:

Yes, I do. Yes, I have got reported from 100 countries.

And in most, but it's — you only see it replicated in large, massive countries, continental-size, like the United States, where there's so much going on internally, that the outside world seems almost to disappear in a way.

But in many — Europe is mainly small countries, and even the biggest countries is small by our standards. But, in Europe, in Africa and the Middle East, people are much more connected to world events, I find, than in the United States.

It's almost as if you know intellectually that every place in the U.S. — the Oklahoma Panhandle has agricultural ties with cities in China and everywhere. You know all this intellectually, but when you actually see it, and drive across it, the continent is so big and variegated, that the rest of the world seems abstract almost.

OMG, what a case of stupidity.  Yeah, the global economy has one way to go, to destruction.  Let me lay it out.

Let's take the Oklahoma panhandle.  I know the place after all. The Oklahoma panhandle produces wheat and cows. The Oklahoma panhandle is also on top of the Ogalalla aquifer.  Now here's the joke. The global economy is mining that aquifer. Guess what happens when it runs out of water? You can only have a few cows per acre and do dry land farming because, no water, no irrigation.  Hahahahahaha.  The joke of the future is that link like a lot of other globalized shit's gonna come crashing down on fucking idiots like Robert Kaplan.  The moron can't see beyond his cloistered big city living.  Can't  morons see that mining water is a one way trip to oblivion?  I guess not, huh? Oh, and the cow farts in the stinky feedlots are a gas too, heheh.   Just think of all of that methane.

Mideast?  Yeah, I'm sure the folks over there are well connected.  They can't fucking help it after all. All of shitfuck Neocons made that happen. I'm sure they know about every bomb, aircraft, missle, etc. our  MIC has to offer. Well guess what? I bet they also think like like ole Rags does and hates globalization/Neocons.  After all, they experienced the nations getting wrecked, their infrastructure destroyed, family killed and the like. I also perfectly understand why IS lopped the heads off those Americans.  If some country did that to my family, fucking A, I'd like to lop some heads off with an AR-15.  Just shoot enough bullets at the neck and heads will roll, man.

Small towns?  The idiocy here blows my mind.  Globalization is what wrecked the economy there. We exported jobs and imported cheap shit in its place , yes because globalization. 

Immigration/borders.  Guess what? We need fewer people because resources are going to become scarce and we'll have our share of climate change refugees.  Charity begins at home, man.

Besides, local resilance is a better way to go.  Problem is, is wrecks the profit stream of multinational corporations so that's why few know of it. Oh well, we'll get to it later after globalism crashes and burns.

https://www.resalliance.org/

Yeah, reds need to wake up to being screwed over by a facet of globalization being tinkle down economics and no regulations concerning workers, that being neoliberalism.

Blues likewise need to wake up to being duped into supporting cheap labor and the importation of more consumers and screwing over their concerns about mother earth and  poor citizens.

Neoliberalism/Neoconservatism the true axis of evil of our times.

[Eric the Green]

"Panarchy. No system can be understood or managed by focusing on it at a single scale. All systems (and SESs especially) exist and function at multiple scales of space, time and social organization, and the interactions across scales are fundamentally important in determining the dynamics of the system at any particular focal scale."

Sounds like the wholism I was discussing with Bill the Piper. Yes, I'm a green and I like resilience. As above, so below

Maybe Kaplan has a blind spot, as conventional globalists tend to have. Maybe he just didn't mention free trade and all the exported jobs. His tour sure is revealing, but what does it reveal? Can the small towns hope for the return of the old jobs? How can they connect with the world? Maybe through resilience? Free trade did have a bad effect on the heartland's old towns. Of course, before Trump, they voted for that free trade too, along with the rest of neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism, over and over again, and would again too probably.

He's right ultimately when he says "all I could think about is, how to bridge the divide is, we can't go backward, we can only go forward, because the only future is global." And it's going to be hard to bring down the corporations from their perch enough so that the people aren't screwed by going global. Corporate globalism is the problem. It's going to take a much more skillful regime in the USA than we have had yet to fix it. It seems unlikely. Maybe these towns will just have to close up, and the people move to globalized places where they can benefit from the new economy.

That would be hard too without the social and regulatory support which they have voted against all this time and have been destroying all these decades in the name of self-reliance and fundie religion. Maybe the younger ones can move away or bring the world home, and maybe get on-line and learn the skills which the globalized blue-state companies want to hire. Meanwhile, as living standards rise around the globe, exporting jobs will become less attractive to US-based corporations in coming decades.

Immigration is the wrong target, as I keep telling you. Poor immigrant workers are not doing the jobs that the people in the small towns want to come back. Trump wants to bring in the elite workers who take American jobs instead. He just wants to keep out the people of the non-white races from shithole countries he doesn't like. And the heartland has voted to keep them out all these years too, and voted to blame the other races for the poverty which the neo-liberals and their dog-whistling politicians have imposed upon them.

[Ragnarök_62]

(10-05-2018, 02:15 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: "Panarchy. No system can be understood or managed by focusing on it at a single scale. All systems (and SESs especially) exist and function at multiple scales of space, time and social organization, and the interactions across scales are fundamentally important in determining the dynamics of the system at any particular focal scale."

Sounds like the wholism I was discussing with Bill the Piper. Yes, I'm a green and I like resilience. As above, so below

Maybe Kaplan has a blind spot, as conventional globalists tend to have. Maybe he just didn't mention free trade and all the exported jobs. His tour sure is revealing, but what does it reveal? Can the small towns hope for the return of the old jobs? How can they connect with the world? Maybe through resilience? Free trade did have a bad effect on the heartland's old towns. Of course, before Trump, they voted for that free trade too, along with the rest of neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism, over and over again, and would again too probably.

He's right ultimately when he says "all I could think about is, how to bridge the divide is, we can't go backward, we can only go forward, because the only future is global." And it's going to be hard to bring down the corporations from their perch enough so that the people aren't screwed by going global. Corporate globalism is the problem. It's going to take a much more skillful regime in the USA than we have had yet to fix it. It seems unlikely. Maybe these towns will just have to close up, and the people move to globalized places where they can benefit from the new economy.

That would be hard too without the social and regulatory support which they have voted against all this time and have been destroying all these decades in the name of self-reliance and fundie religion. Maybe the younger ones can move away or bring the world home, and maybe get on-line and learn the skills which the globalized blue-state companies want to hire. Meanwhile, as living standards rise around the globe, exporting jobs will become less attractive to US-based corporations in coming decades.

Immigration is the wrong target, as I keep telling you. Poor immigrant workers are not doing the jobs that the people in the small towns want to come back. Trump wants to bring in the elite workers who take American jobs instead. He just wants to keep out the people of the non-white races from shithole countries he doesn't like. And the heartland has voted to keep them out all these years too, and voted to blame the other races for the poverty which the neo-liberals and their dog-whistling politicians have imposed upon them.

1.  Small towns don't need to have old jobs return. Since lots of high tech jobs can be done remotely, it doesn't matter where you live. Folks can have the benefits of small towns like no traffic, cheap housing, and fresh food, once agriculture has to scale down. <-  Big AG is doomed by resource depletion like all things big. Oil will get more expensive.  Oil won't run out, but it's gonna cost.   So, the young ones can get on-line and learn the skills of whatever sized companies , chuck cars even, and enjoy a less hectic small town life. Yeah, cars are so over rated. Tesla's a joke. Why mess with cars when one can replace big ugly freeways and airports with train stations for regular and light rail? Meh on corporations. The way I see it, there are no US based corporations. All big corporations are transnationals that owe no allegiance to  anyone but the bottom line and need a smacking by anti trust laws.  

2. I'm not worried about corporate globalism lasting. It's gonna collapse due to climate change, population overshoot, and mass poverty. It's a one way trip to a new dark ages man.

3. I just want my little country to escape as much of the mess as possible. That means fewer people to match the carrying capacity. 

4. Jobs no Americans will do. That's dumb.  If you shut off the cheap labor, companies can either raise wages and improve working conditions so Americans will do the jobs or else they can just shut down.  It's their choice and since they fucked over American workers, tough shit to them.  I'd pick lettuce if I got paid $30.00/hr plus benefits. Lettuce prices go up, but oh well. This is what I keep telling you. There's no need for more people, because resources will become more scarce. I don't want to import elite labor either. If companies want to do business here, they need to support our education system more.  They sure as hell need to have a must do reason to do that.

5. There will be no need to connect to a world that's like a petri dish full of bacteria.  Humans ain't no different. We'll keep breeding until our population crashes in our own waste. Trump's a bit off wrt shithole.  The whole world's becoming a shithole full of microplastics, fertilizer fueled red tides , and just plain trash.  Trump is off wrt shit holes. The whole world is becoming a shit hole. The US is a literal shit hole due to homeless problems, Mr. Trump. The flood tide of human shit means the whole world is a shit hole. Now that's one thing that's global, human shit, all over the place , regardless of race, it's something whether we like it or not we'll have to embrace, face to face.  

[pbrower2a]

(10-05-2018, 01:20 AM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote:

(10-04-2018, 11:18 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Author Robert Kaplan answers questions from readers

My thoughts: The parochial, provincial, insular character of red America was revealed to Robert Kaplan on his tour of America, as reported in a PBS Newshour interview. It makes clear to me again how the red-state Trump voters have created their own suffering. It's the very anti-globalist, narrow-minded, pro-free market, anti-socialist, anti-diversity policies they have voted for for decades that keep them in decline, while the coasts and the university towns that are connected to the world thrive. And yet they keep voting to keep themselves in pain and in decline. In voting for Trump, the towns in the heartland have voted to make themselves even MORE cut off from the world, through erecting immigration and tariff barriers and empowering an American administration that encourages the rejection of knowledge and the understanding of other peoples. It is just the opposite course Kaplan says they need to take in order to recover. Can they wake up? Or must they be dragged into a better future through political victory OVER them?


......

Jeffrey Brown:

OK, let's go to one more question.

Brandon Irwin:

Mr. Kaplan, you say in the book, "Americans, I find more and more each day as I travel, do not want to know the details about foreign policy."

Is this disconnect with foreign policy replicated around the world?

Jeffrey Brown:

You do — we should say you travel all over. You have written about many other parts of the world.

Robert Kaplan:

Yes, I do. Yes, I have got reported from 100 countries.

And in most, but it's — you only see it replicated in large, massive countries, continental-size, like the United States, where there's so much going on internally, that the outside world seems almost to disappear in a way.

But in many — Europe is mainly small countries, and even the biggest countries is small by our standards. But, in Europe, in Africa and the Middle East, people are much more connected to world events, I find, than in the United States.

It's almost as if you know intellectually that every place in the U.S. — the Oklahoma Panhandle has agricultural ties with cities in China and everywhere. You know all this intellectually, but when you actually see it, and drive across it, the continent is so big and variegated, that the rest of the world seems abstract almost.

OMG, what a case of stupidity.  Yeah, the global economy has one way to go, to destruction.  Let me lay it out.

Let's take the Oklahoma panhandle.  I know the place after all. The Oklahoma panhandle produces wheat and cows. The Oklahoma panhandle is also on top of the Ogalalla aquifer.  Now here's the joke. The global economy is mining that aquifer. Guess what happens when it runs out of water? You can only have a few cows per acre and do dry land farming because, no water, no irrigation.  Hahahahahaha.  The joke of the future is that link like a lot of other globalized shit's gonna come crashing down on fucking idiots like Robert Kaplan.  The moron can't see beyond his cloistered big city living.  Can't  morons see that mining water is a one way trip to oblivion?  I guess not, huh? Oh, and the cow farts in the stinky feedlots are a gas too, heheh.   Just think of all of that methane.

The American High Plains are steppe -- terrain that needs irrigation for productive farming. I can say this of farming: if the agricultural system fails, the whole economic order collapses. Famines kill social orders. Food shortages spark revolutions. A near-famine was the spark of the French Revolution; things must have looked great at Versailles, but economic elites always have ways to hide the nastiness of their social orders from themselves.

We have economic elites in this country who often have no idea of what the economic reality is outside of their cloistered world of unrestrained privilege. They ensure that people of talent never get a chance to compete with them. They have sponsored economic policies such as the nearly-flat income tax that taxes a struggling mom-and-pop firm as if it were Exxon-Mobil or Wells Fargo bank. The graduated income tax created niches for small-town banks, retailers, and restaurants. To be sure, there are economies of scale in advertising (which has nothing to do with tax policy) and tax compliance. The IRS can practically shut down a one-site store while it audits the business, but that is no problem for Wal*Mart.

I think we all know what people would be first to go to the figurative guillotine if America ever had a food crisis -- heirs, the executive nomenklatura, and of course their political flunkies.  

Quote:Mideast?  Yeah, I'm sure the folks over there are well connected.  They can't fucking help it after all. All of shitfuck Neocons made that happen. I'm sure they know about every bomb, aircraft, missle, etc. our  MIC has to offer. Well guess what? I bet they also think like like ole Rags does and hates globalization/Neocons.  After all, they experienced the nations getting wrecked, their infrastructure destroyed, family killed and the like. I also perfectly understand why IS lopped the heads off those Americans.  If some country did that to my family, fucking A, I'd like to lop some heads off with an AR-15.  Just shoot enough bullets at the neck and heads will roll, man.

The only Middle-Eastern country that has its stuff together is Israel -- sort of. Even there, economic inequality is severe.

Quote:Small towns?  The idiocy here blows my mind.  Globalization is what wrecked the economy there. We exported jobs and imported cheap shit in its place , yes because globalization. 

...and a tax system that has fostered mergers and acquisitions, the transformation of giant American corporations from manufacturers to importers, and the disappearance of small-scale manufacturing. Where I live in Michigan, the manufacturing is heavily in sweatshop suppliers to the auto industry that looks for ways to cut costs. Dairies have gone from being farms to veritable factories. Banking and retail used to be cottage industries, but the small-town department stores are long gone in favor of "Wally World".  

Quote:Immigration/borders.  Guess what? We need fewer people because resources are going to become scarce and we'll have our share of climate change refugees.  Charity begins at home, man.

...if climate change  gets as severe as it looks to be, then we will end up with huge numbers of internal refugees, as from Florida.  Global warming will inundate not only Philadelphia, but also the rich farmland to its north and west that made Philadelphia possible. It will confiscate property on a scale that Stalinist commies could only dream of -- and with large amounts of property render meaningless, it will create legal anarchy.

Quote: Besides, local resilience is a better way to go.  Problem is, is wrecks the profit stream of multinational corporations so that's why few know of it. Oh well, we'll get to it later after globalism crashes and burns.

The global elites do not want people to be resilient; they want people to be helpless and thus easier to exploit and fool, even to bring about fascism by playing up resentments. Bad as Trump is, he is as much a symptom as the illness.

Quote:Yeah, reds need to wake up to being screwed over by a facet of globalization being tinkle down economics and no regulations concerning workers, that being neoliberalism.

Blues likewise need to wake up to being duped into supporting cheap labor and the importation of more consumers and screwing over their concerns about mother earth and  poor citizens. Neoliberalism/Neoconservatism the true axis of evil of our times.

[/quote]

The Regeneracy begins in earnest when people start turning to mass action instead of to tribalism.

[pbrower2a]

(10-05-2018, 04:05 AM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote: 1.  Small towns don't need to have old jobs return. Since lots of high tech jobs can be done remotely, it doesn't matter where you live. Folks can have the benefits of small towns like no traffic, cheap housing, and fresh food, once agriculture has to scale down. <-  Big AG is doomed by resource depletion like all things big. Oil will get more expensive.  Oil won't run out, but it's gonna cost.   So, the young ones can get on-line and learn the skills of whatever sized companies , chuck cars even, and enjoy a less hectic small town life. Yeah, cars are so over rated. Tesla's a joke. Why mess with cars when one can replace big ugly freeways and airports with train stations for regular and light rail? Meh on corporations. The way I see it, there are no US based corporations. All big corporations are transnationals that owe no allegiance to  anyone but the bottom line and need a smacking by anti trust laws.

I am satisfied that I could do copy writing, proofreading, and copy editing in the small town in which I live. I might not want to stay there because the community in which I live has little to offer. It has a good little theater, but otherwise its culture comes from Wal*Mart. There's nothing there that isn't available elsewhere except what requires community attachments from childhood.

Quote:2. I'm not worried about corporate globalism lasting. It's gonna collapse due to climate change, population overshoot, and mass poverty. It's a one way trip to a new dark ages man.

Expansion of deserts may be a slight concern in contrast to the inundation of prime farmland whence will come a reduction in the food supply.

Quote:3. I just want my little country to escape as much of the mess as possible. That means fewer people to match the carrying capacity. 

Zero population growth worldwide!

Quote:4. Jobs no Americans will do. That's dumb.  If you shut off the cheap labor, companies can either raise wages and improve working conditions so Americans will do the jobs or else they can just shut down.  It's their choice and since they fucked over American workers, tough shit to them.  I'd pick lettuce if I got paid $30.00/hr plus benefits. Lettuce prices go up, but oh well. This is what I keep telling you. There's no need for more people, because resources will become more scarce. I don't want to import elite labor either. If companies want to do business here, they need to support our education system more.  They sure as hell need to have a must do reason to do that.

The children of the immigrants who do such work assimilate the desire for the American dream.

Quote:5. There will be no need to connect to a world that's like a petri dish full of bacteria.  Humans ain't no different. We'll keep breeding until our population crashes in our own waste. Trump's a bit off wrt shithole.  The whole world's becoming a shithole full of microplastics, fertilizer fueled red tides , and just plain trash.  Trump is off wrt shit holes. The whole world is becoming a shit hole. The US is a literal shit hole due to homeless problems, Mr. Trump. The flood tide of human shit means the whole world is a shit hole. Now that's one thing that's global, human shit, all over the place , regardless of race, it's something whether we like it or not we'll have to embrace, face to face. 

Trump has a fecal mind. He has always been either a narcissist or a sociopath, but I also notice a rigidity of thought and a loss of inhibitions commonplace among the senile. He may be a cruel man, but he serves economic interests themselves cruel. Again, he is ultimately a symptom of pathology of thought within American elites.