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02-02-2021, 01:35 PM
(This post was last modified: 02-02-2021, 01:41 PM by Einzige.)
Quote:Since Marx wrote his theories around the time of the Mexican War, Democracies have learned to change their culture through non violence, protest and legislation. If violence is the last resort, non violence would be preferred to revolution.
Democracies do not change their culture. The demands of Capital restructure society; the vote is typically an after-the-fact affirmation of changes which are already underway. The Civil Rights Movement was only possible because segments of the bourgeois saw a vast underserved market in the African American population.
Quote:The problem is that non-violence is of limited use against autocratic regimes. They just ignore their people generally. If violent revolution is to be cost effective or necessary, it will occur there.
Capital is not a political regime, but the totality of human life on planet Earth today. It is the structuring force behind all human activity.
Quote:The problems are also not becoming greater. Things were much worse in the Gilded Age.
The problems of the Gilded Age have reproduced themselves in the present day at an enormously magnified rate. The human relations of the Gilded Age, however, did not threaten to drive the whole species into extinction.
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02-02-2021, 01:40 PM
(This post was last modified: 02-02-2021, 01:42 PM by Einzige.)
Quote:Now if
Quote:(1) middle-income white people started voting like middle-class black people, or
(2) middle-class white people started giving a damn about the welfare of poor white largely in the M&D South...
America would get the renewal that it needs.
Eugenics was a middle-class progressive phenomenon, as were zoning laws (to keep the poor from congregating), Prohibition, etc. Nobody wants or desires a petit-bourgeois progressivism which yokes the interests and lives of the proletariat to the "worthy" middle classes. Middle class progressivism is a class response to their declining fortunes and an attempt to throw the mass of the poor into the breach against Big Capital.
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(02-01-2021, 02:39 PM)Einzige Wrote: (02-01-2021, 02:06 PM)David Horn Wrote: (02-01-2021, 12:58 PM)Einzige Wrote: Can any of you describe the political economy of Team Fed or Team Blue in any systemic way?
For this, you must paint with a sprayer, because it's all over the map.
I can pretty well do so.
Team Red theoretically supports free markets and low taxes.
Practice means more than theory. "Team Red" no longer believes in free markets. If it can use Big Government, as in lavish subsidies and lucrative contracts with the government it does. If it can favor monopolies and cartels over small businesses it does. If it can bring about wars to secure captive markets, cheap labor, and economic resources it does. It is perfectly happy to 'liberate' countries like Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela only to subject the people of those countries to America's most rapacious capitalists. It may have made peace with welfare because Big Business has found a reliable market among the poor for food, housing, fuels, and medicine.
Quote:In actuality it subsidizes domestic manufacturers and extractive industries, with roots in the Army and Marines (of course the military skews conservative in general, but these are the political mainstays of the GOP there), as well as agriculture. This creates contradictions between its social base and theoretical superstructure.
Technically, the Marines are under the command of the Navy. It is easy to see the Army and the Marines as brute force in warfare, but that is becoming obsolete. See further.
Quote:Team Blue ostensibly supports leveling social programs and unions.
Not really.
Quote:In actuality it subsidizes foreign trade oriented industries and the emerging green and IT sectors; in the military its strength mostly lies in the Navy and Air Force. This produces contradictions between its social base and theoretical superstructure.
You may get this idea from the connection of the Navy and Air Force to high technology. It is worth remembering that the high technology of Silicon Valley depended upon
(1) the engineering department, especially the electrical-engineering section of the University of California at Berkeley
(2) the analogue at Stanford University
(3) the analogue at San Jose State University
(4) the analogue at California Polytechnic, which although isn't in in the San Francisco Bay Area but is about as close to the Bay Area as "Ell Ay", with the Bay Area much more attractive to "nerds"
(5) well-trained electrical engineers from the US Navy who completed their military terms
You would be surprised how important the fifth was at least in the 1970's.
......
There are other areas with high-tech booms, and what is most essential is that the places be attractive places in which to live and have excellent universities with great engineering departments, like the Route 128 corridor near Boston, "Silicon Prairie" which is Austin, Texas but to a lesser extent Dallas and San Antonio (Waco seems somehow to be missed), San Diego (which is a hotbed for biotech), and arguably Ann Arbor. Detroit, Flint, and Toledo may be urban Hells, but Ann Arbor is very nice. I'm going to guess that Madison, Wisconsin is much like that. It is obviously harder to attract technologically-adept people who recognize the value of learning (and high technology relies heavily upon learning) who would find it hard to relocate to places like... well, Detroit, where nothing seems to work. Right now, even its major-league sports teams are awful, and don't let me start on the Detroit Independent Fool District.
Quote:The interplay of these contradictions drives the dialectic of American politics.
That's Hegel for you. History never quite comes to an end, does it? History is largely how Humanity deals with contradictions in everything important, from religion to economics to partisan politics to culture to technology.
Quote:Marxism works.
You tell me -- which Marxist school? I am sure that someone can tell me that there is some perfect form of fascism that would solve all problems. Yes, cull Humanity until the only people still are the ones who adore the Greatest Political Leader of All Time. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, the Chilean and Argentine military regimes, Apartheid figures in South Africa, and Satan Hussein are much more similar than they might have said they were.
Humanity is terribly flawed, but what else is there? Maybe we must accommodate some of the flaws in people who have no choice and put the squeeze on people who have the choice and do wrong (like Donald Trump).
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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02-02-2021, 02:27 PM
(This post was last modified: 02-02-2021, 02:27 PM by Einzige.)
(02-02-2021, 02:13 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: You tell me -- which Marxist school? I am sure that someone can tell me that there is some perfect form of fascism that would solve all problems. Yes, cull Humanity until the only people still are the ones who adore the Greatest Political Leader of All Time. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, the Chilean and Argentine military regimes, Apartheid figures in South Africa, and Satan Hussein are much more similar than they might have said they were.
Marxism doesn't have various schools to be implemented, and when the revolution comes it will not be driven by those who have co sciously converted to it.
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(02-02-2021, 10:37 AM)Einzige Wrote: Quote: Team Red theoretically supports limited government and supports the Constitution, individual rights, the entire military (the sailors, the airmen, the infantry, special forces, marines and whoever directly commands them) and fiscal prudence as well.
Except none of this, of course, is actually true. Team Red were the ones who initiated Prohibition (in the name of moral purity), the War on Drugs (in the name of moral purity), the War on Crime (in the name of moral purity), authorized the Patriot Act (with help from Joe Biden), stoked the flames of the Moral Majority in the 80s, defended laws discriminating against LGBTQ+ people, etc. They don't actually care about muh freedoms. They care about market freedoms, and only then when they serve their own party.
Quote:. The Rhino's (JFK minded Democrats/Reagan Democrats) value big government and the use of government to serve its interests and spending massive amounts of money about as much as the Blue Team. The Rhino's are pretty much on their way out at the moment (5 Senators/10 Congress people). The rest have fallen in line with the American Right's populist movement.
Donald Trump spent more in office than Obama....
Quote:I know that you don't like either team and you'd prefer a team that represents pure Marxism and prefer to live in a world that's costs nothing where no one owns anything
People own personal property under Communism.
Quote:where no one cares about anything valuable and everyone is completely selfless and motivate by the goodness of producing then sharing
Negative. That is not Marxism. From The German Ideology.
Quote:Communism is quite incomprehensible to our saint because the communists do not oppose egoism to selflessness or selflessness to egoism, nor do they express this contradiction theoretically either in its sentimental or ‘it its high-flown ideological form; they rather demonstrate its material source, with which it disappears of itself. The communists do not preach morality at all, as Stirner does so extensively. They do not put to people the moral demand: love one another, do not be egoists, etc.; on the contrary, they are very well aware that egoism, just as much as selflessness, is in definite circumstances a necessary form of the self-assertion of individuals. Hence, the communists by no means want, as Saint Max believes, and as his loyal Dottore Graziano (Arnold Ruge) repeats after him (for which Saint Max calls him “an unusually cunning and politic mind”, Wigand, p. 192), to do away with the “private individual” for the sake of the “general”, selfless man. That is a figment of the imagination concerning which both of them could already have found the necessary explanation in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher. Communist theoreticians, the only communists who have time to devote to the study of history, are distinguished precisely by the fact that they alone have discovered that throughout history the “general interest” is created by individuals who are defined as “private persons”. They know that this contradiction is only a seeming one because one side of it, what is called the “general interest”, is constantly being produced by the other side, private interest, and in relation to the latter it is by no means an independent force with an independent history — so that this contradiction is in practice constantly destroyed and reproduced. Hence it is not a question of the Hegelian “negative unity” of two sides of a contradiction, but of the materially determined destruction of the preceding materially determined mode of life of individuals, with the disappearance of which this contradiction together with its unity also disappears.
Under Communism, one produces because there is social utility in it - there are more personal benefits to production under Communism than under capitalism.
Quote:but that world doesn't exist so you'll have to choose between the two or learn to accept whichever you view as the worst of the two and the greater threat to you personally.
Why?
Trump had a virus show up unexpectedly and impact the entire economy that required massive spending to keep industries, companies and working people afloat while the country was dealing/adjusting to all the work related restrictions and government imposed shutdowns. Oh, he also lowered the corporate tax rate to reverse the outward trend in manufacturing and initiate new growth in manufacturing. He also lowered the individual tax rate and increased deductions and added tax credits to help the working class who had been struggling to stay above water for several years keep more of the money they earned in the own pockets/bank accounts as well. Obama inherited a stabilized economy from the previous administration that he didn't do much of anything to improve or initiate growth to replenish job losses. He also a costly war in Iraq that he wanted to get out of as soon as possible and he pretty much milked out a couple of terms without anything else major occurring here while in office. I'd say the difference in the amount of spending between them is pretty obvious.
The people own whatever personal goods that are made available to the public under Communism. But, the people don't own anything of major value like homes or land or business's or previous metals or boats or cars or precious heirlooms or precious art and so forth. As far as your question why? I don't know why, you'll have to go back to go back to the beginning of civilization and ask them why.
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02-02-2021, 02:36 PM
(This post was last modified: 02-02-2021, 02:44 PM by Einzige.)
Quote:Trump had a virus show up unexpectedly and impact the entire economy that required massive spending to keep industries, companies and working people afloat while the country was dealing/adjusting to all the work related restrictions and government imposed shutdowns.
But,again, I thought we wanted a capitalism that was True Capitalism? A capitalism that didn't pick winners and losers? If they couldn't foresee a pandemic they have only themselves to blame.
Quote:Oh, he also lowered the corporate tax rate to reverse the outward trend in manufacturing and initiate new growth in manufacturing.
This never substnatially.materialized.
Quote:He also lowered the individual tax rate and increased deductions and added tax credits to help the working class who had been struggling to stay above water for several years keep more of the money they earned in the own pockets/bank accounts as well.
Those tax cuts are due to expire in three years
The corporate tax cuts, however, were made permanent.
Quote:Obama inherited a stabilized economy from the previous administration that he didn't do much of anything to improve or initiate growth to replenish job losses.
Obama was a piece of shit, the drone king, but this is a remarkable way to describe the economy in October 2008, which entered the deepest recession in 70 years and saw the loss of 17% of the economy (and which had been tending towards recessionary conditions since 2005).
Quote:He also a costly war in Iraq that he wanted to get out of as soon as possible
Did you just say Obama initiated the War in Iraq? Again, to be sure, he armed ISIS and contributed to the ckusterfick there, but Bush started it with a deliberate lie.
Obama initiated the cult of Quantitative Easing - paying banks to receive and hold printer money. Trump not only didn't reverse this, he continued doling out money.
Quote:he pretty much milked out a couple of terms without anything else major occurring here while in office. I'd say the difference in the amount of spending between them is pretty obvious.
Trump was on track to spend more than Obama before the pandemic (and the economy was pre-recessionary in 2019).
Quote:The people own whatever personal goods that are made available to the public under Communism. But, the people don't own anything of major value like homes or land or business's or previous metals or boats or cars or precious heirlooms or precious art and so forth.
The people control everything under Communism. Society becomes the direct administrator of its products, and the individual receives from it no less than what he puts into it.
Think about the cognitive dissonance you have. You think that I and the liberals on this forum are the same thing, but that I want what they want, just more. (You think Biden is in league with people like me, too, which is ridiculous.) Meanwhile, you think Trump - who campaigned as a trade protectionist and an economic nationalist - really just wants freedom.
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(02-02-2021, 02:27 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: (02-02-2021, 10:37 AM)Einzige Wrote: Quote: Team Red theoretically supports limited government and supports the Constitution, individual rights, the entire military (the sailors, the airmen, the infantry, special forces, marines and whoever directly commands them) and fiscal prudence as well.
Except none of this, of course, is actually true. Team Red were the ones who initiated Prohibition (in the name of moral purity), the War on Drugs (in the name of moral purity), the War on Crime (in the name of moral purity), authorized the Patriot Act (with help from Joe Biden), stoked the flames of the Moral Majority in the 80s, defended laws discriminating against LGBTQ+ people, etc. They don't actually care about muh freedoms. They care about market freedoms, and only then when they serve their own party.
Quote:. The Rhino's (JFK minded Democrats/Reagan Democrats) value big government and the use of government to serve its interests and spending massive amounts of money about as much as the Blue Team. The Rhino's are pretty much on their way out at the moment (5 Senators/10 Congress people). The rest have fallen in line with the American Right's populist movement.
Donald Trump spent more in office than Obama....
Quote:I know that you don't like either team and you'd prefer a team that represents pure Marxism and prefer to live in a world that's costs nothing where no one owns anything
People own personal property under Communism.
Quote:where no one cares about anything valuable and everyone is completely selfless and motivate by the goodness of producing then sharing
Negative. That is not Marxism. From The German Ideology.
Quote:Communism is quite incomprehensible to our saint because the communists do not oppose egoism to selflessness or selflessness to egoism, nor do they express this contradiction theoretically either in its sentimental or ‘it its high-flown ideological form; they rather demonstrate its material source, with which it disappears of itself. The communists do not preach morality at all, as Stirner does so extensively. They do not put to people the moral demand: love one another, do not be egoists, etc.; on the contrary, they are very well aware that egoism, just as much as selflessness, is in definite circumstances a necessary form of the self-assertion of individuals. Hence, the communists by no means want, as Saint Max believes, and as his loyal Dottore Graziano (Arnold Ruge) repeats after him (for which Saint Max calls him “an unusually cunning and politic mind”, Wigand, p. 192), to do away with the “private individual” for the sake of the “general”, selfless man. That is a figment of the imagination concerning which both of them could already have found the necessary explanation in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher. Communist theoreticians, the only communists who have time to devote to the study of history, are distinguished precisely by the fact that they alone have discovered that throughout history the “general interest” is created by individuals who are defined as “private persons”. They know that this contradiction is only a seeming one because one side of it, what is called the “general interest”, is constantly being produced by the other side, private interest, and in relation to the latter it is by no means an independent force with an independent history — so that this contradiction is in practice constantly destroyed and reproduced. Hence it is not a question of the Hegelian “negative unity” of two sides of a contradiction, but of the materially determined destruction of the preceding materially determined mode of life of individuals, with the disappearance of which this contradiction together with its unity also disappears.
Under Communism, one produces because there is social utility in it - there are more personal benefits to production under Communism than under capitalism.
Quote:but that world doesn't exist so you'll have to choose between the two or learn to accept whichever you view as the worst of the two and the greater threat to you personally.
Why?
Trump had a virus show up unexpectedly and impact the entire economy that required massive spending to keep industries, companies and working people afloat while the country was dealing/adjusting to all the work related restrictions and government imposed shutdowns. Oh, he also lowered the corporate tax rate to reverse the outward trend in manufacturing and initiate new growth in manufacturing. He also lowered the individual tax rate and increased deductions and added tax credits to help the working class who had been struggling to stay above water for several years keep more of the money they earned in the own pockets/bank accounts as well. Obama inherited a stabilized economy from the previous administration that he didn't do much of anything to improve or initiate growth to replenish job losses. He also a costly war in Iraq that he wanted to get out of as soon as possible and he pretty much milked out a couple of terms without anything else major occurring here while in office. I'd say the difference in the amount of spending between them is pretty obvious.
The people own whatever personal goods that are made available to the public under Communism. But, the people don't own anything of major value like homes or land or business's or previous metals or boats or cars or precious heirlooms or precious art and so forth. As far as your question why? I don't know why, you'll have to go back to go back to the beginning of civilization and ask them why.
We have a fight between a cat and a Jack Russell terrier. It's not clear, but both may have sized each other as prey. One is convinced that as a cat it should reasonably expect to overpower and devour anything its size or smaller. The other is convinced that as a dog it should reasonably expect to overpower and devour anything its size or smaller. What one ignores is how cat-like dogs can be and how dog-like cats can be.
Both creatures are for all practical purposes miniature versions of tigers. Terriers are the most tiger-like of dogs. This fight is the sort that could have arisen in a Roman circus between a tiger and a bear, except involving far-smaller creatures. This is a fight to avoid. Try breaking it up with your hands and you will be mauled.
I'll take the nozzle of a spray hose and shoot both, thank you.
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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(02-01-2021, 12:58 PM)Einzige Wrote: Can any of you describe the political economy of Team Fed or Team Blue in any systemic way?
I'd call it Fascism myself.
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(02-02-2021, 02:47 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: (02-01-2021, 12:58 PM)Einzige Wrote: Can any of you describe the political economy of Team Fed or Team Blue in any systemic way?
I'd call it Fascism myself.
Hint: There wasn't much difference between historical fascism - as actually practiced in Italy and Germany, not as written on paper - and the economic policies of Reagan or Clinton or Obama or Trump. The Italians and Germans both privatized tons of shit pre-war.
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(02-02-2021, 12:48 PM)mamabug Wrote: (02-02-2021, 12:39 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: (02-01-2021, 11:48 AM)mamabug Wrote: (02-01-2021, 01:34 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Donald Trump left plenty of warning signs. He has huge funds and he gets attached to a porn star. He is taped talking about grabbing women by their "kitty cats". He mocks the handicapped. He denounces people for their religion and ethnicity. A bit fewer than 46% or the American electorate vote for him in 2016, and an even larger share vote for him in 2020. Character is destiny, and people of bad character eventually get bad results even if they have competence and talent. Just look at Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, and Phil Spector.
Again, nothing you say about him changes the fact that there were a number of people who voted for him despite all of that simply because, in a binary system, the things his administration might or might not accomplish was preferable than the policy agenda of his opponent.
The moral objectionability of Trump allowed the left to spend four years pretending that vote didn't happen and try to figure out how to jury rig the system so that it would never happen again instead of regrouping and determining why the loss actually happened and coming back with a stronger, better party that appealed to more than a bare majority of America. Continuing to act as if nobody except a racist would have voted for him is furthering this ostrich-like mindset and is only going to further the partisan divide.
But, I'm getting tired of being Cassandra so I may just have to stop engaging in discussions on this topic. I've made my points, consider them or not.
"a person whose valid warnings or concerns are disbelieved by others." Who is Cassandra depends on your views. People like me have been warning against free-market economics and the moral minority for well over 40 years.
To people like me, warning of further partisan division now is like warning about a storm that has already come and flooded the city. Why should I care? The only point is who is going to win.
I agree, lots of Republican and Republican-leaning voters supported Trump as a matter of course because he pledged to support their favorite policies, like pro-gun, anti-abortion, anti-tax, anti-immigrant, pro-business etc. Racism is a hidden factor in much of this, as well as religious conservatism, but it's not the only reason people voted for Trump. It just stirred up a lot of hate that was hidden before. People like me on the Left called him a fake president, because he was unqualified for the job, and we wondered why that was not a factor in peoples' votes. "Jury-rigging the system" on the Democrats' part consisted of efforts, only somewhat successful, to end the jury-rigging the Republicans and our founding fathers had done, especially voter suppression laws, voter-roll purges, poll closings in Democratic-voting areas and so on.
The Democrats did come back with a stronger party and a better candidate in 2020. Biden won over 7 million more votes than Trump, and still barely won the White House because of the outdated electoral college that favors small and former slave states. If the Democrats don't choose Harris to run in 2024, they should continue to get stronger, since they are interested in real problems, and since the country is becoming more diverse and less wedded to ancient ideologies. If Republicans cling to Trump they will lose ground and perhaps disappear. If the Democrats continue to give-in to or adopt Republican policies, they will continue to appear weak and ineffective and will also lose ground, and so will the nation. What needs to happen is that more people need to learn that Democratic Party policies work and are better than the Republican Party policies.
Trump blatantly appealed to racism throughout his 5-year political career, and did not care about police shootings more than he did about using supposed riots to stoke his vote. That helped his chances to win, and it also further divided the nation much more than correctly attributing his support in part to racism would.
Eric, I kinda like you, but sometimes you illustrate to me just how bat sh*t insane and immersed in a narrative disconnected from reality the modern left has become, at least when compared to those I admired in my youth. Some of the statements you casually throw out as Truth™ are exactly why I worry about the fate of dissenters in the remaining parts of the 4T and just how totalitarian the 1T will be.
What statements do you mean?
This one is the key to the future: "What needs to happen is that more people need to learn that Democratic Party policies work and are better than the Republican Party policies."
I clearly stated that I don't agree with totalitarian measures, whether administered by the left or the right. If you choose not to believe me, that's your choice. It seems like a strawman you are putting up. It is the right-wing where today's danger to democracy comes from, as should be obvious to all after Jan.6. I also dissent from conspiracy theory and misinformation, no matter where on the political circle it comes from.
There's no doubt about the racist appeal of Trump, and that he brought it out. That doesn't mean there aren't also many Republicans who supported him because of the usual Republican priorities, pre-Trump, such as low taxes and regulations, or a strong military, anti-abortion, pro-gun, etc. which do not necessarily include racism, at least not explicitly.
Nevertheless, the key motivation for common rural and exurban Republican folks to support free-market neo-liberalism slogans and policies (low taxes and regulations, etc.) is because they don't want their tax money to go for welfare and social programs. And the main beneficiaries of those programs are non-whites, so the connection to racism is there that way. But this is not specifically racism.
Republicans tend to think that more regulation and taxes on free enterprise is totalitarian. Is that your position?
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(02-02-2021, 01:40 PM)Einzige Wrote: Quote:Now if
Quote:(1) middle-income white people started voting like middle-class black people, or
(2) middle-class white people started giving a damn about the welfare of poor white largely in the M&D South...
America would get the renewal that it needs.
Eugenics was a middle-class progressive phenomenon, as were zoning laws (to keep the poor from congregating), Prohibition, etc. Nobody wants or desires a petit-bourgeois progressivism which yokes the interests and lives of the proletariat to the "worthy" middle classes. Middle class progressivism is a class response to their declining fortunes and an attempt to throw the mass of the poor into the breach against Big Capital.
Eugenics is discredited because the Nazis used it to decide that 'inconvenient' people be killed. The Nazis took the argument that 'useless' persons do not deserve to live:
![[Image: 220px-EuthanasiePropaganda.jpg]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/32/EuthanasiePropaganda.jpg/220px-EuthanasiePropaganda.jpg)
The Nazi solution:
![[Image: 200px-Hadamar_012.JPG]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6f/Hadamar_012.JPG/200px-Hadamar_012.JPG)
a gas chamber in which carbon monoxide would kill the inmate. Hadamar.
American eugenics saw blacks disproportionately suited for involuntary sterilization.
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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(02-02-2021, 02:42 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: (02-02-2021, 02:27 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: (02-02-2021, 10:37 AM)Einzige Wrote: Quote: Team Red theoretically supports limited government and supports the Constitution, individual rights, the entire military (the sailors, the airmen, the infantry, special forces, marines and whoever directly commands them) and fiscal prudence as well.
Except none of this, of course, is actually true. Team Red were the ones who initiated Prohibition (in the name of moral purity), the War on Drugs (in the name of moral purity), the War on Crime (in the name of moral purity), authorized the Patriot Act (with help from Joe Biden), stoked the flames of the Moral Majority in the 80s, defended laws discriminating against LGBTQ+ people, etc. They don't actually care about muh freedoms. They care about market freedoms, and only then when they serve their own party.
Quote:. The Rhino's (JFK minded Democrats/Reagan Democrats) value big government and the use of government to serve its interests and spending massive amounts of money about as much as the Blue Team. The Rhino's are pretty much on their way out at the moment (5 Senators/10 Congress people). The rest have fallen in line with the American Right's populist movement.
Donald Trump spent more in office than Obama....
Quote:I know that you don't like either team and you'd prefer a team that represents pure Marxism and prefer to live in a world that's costs nothing where no one owns anything
People own personal property under Communism.
Quote:where no one cares about anything valuable and everyone is completely selfless and motivate by the goodness of producing then sharing
Negative. That is not Marxism. From The German Ideology.
Quote:Communism is quite incomprehensible to our saint because the communists do not oppose egoism to selflessness or selflessness to egoism, nor do they express this contradiction theoretically either in its sentimental or ‘it its high-flown ideological form; they rather demonstrate its material source, with which it disappears of itself. The communists do not preach morality at all, as Stirner does so extensively. They do not put to people the moral demand: love one another, do not be egoists, etc.; on the contrary, they are very well aware that egoism, just as much as selflessness, is in definite circumstances a necessary form of the self-assertion of individuals. Hence, the communists by no means want, as Saint Max believes, and as his loyal Dottore Graziano (Arnold Ruge) repeats after him (for which Saint Max calls him “an unusually cunning and politic mind”, Wigand, p. 192), to do away with the “private individual” for the sake of the “general”, selfless man. That is a figment of the imagination concerning which both of them could already have found the necessary explanation in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher. Communist theoreticians, the only communists who have time to devote to the study of history, are distinguished precisely by the fact that they alone have discovered that throughout history the “general interest” is created by individuals who are defined as “private persons”. They know that this contradiction is only a seeming one because one side of it, what is called the “general interest”, is constantly being produced by the other side, private interest, and in relation to the latter it is by no means an independent force with an independent history — so that this contradiction is in practice constantly destroyed and reproduced. Hence it is not a question of the Hegelian “negative unity” of two sides of a contradiction, but of the materially determined destruction of the preceding materially determined mode of life of individuals, with the disappearance of which this contradiction together with its unity also disappears.
Under Communism, one produces because there is social utility in it - there are more personal benefits to production under Communism than under capitalism.
Quote:but that world doesn't exist so you'll have to choose between the two or learn to accept whichever you view as the worst of the two and the greater threat to you personally.
Why?
Trump had a virus show up unexpectedly and impact the entire economy that required massive spending to keep industries, companies and working people afloat while the country was dealing/adjusting to all the work related restrictions and government imposed shutdowns. Oh, he also lowered the corporate tax rate to reverse the outward trend in manufacturing and initiate new growth in manufacturing. He also lowered the individual tax rate and increased deductions and added tax credits to help the working class who had been struggling to stay above water for several years keep more of the money they earned in the own pockets/bank accounts as well. Obama inherited a stabilized economy from the previous administration that he didn't do much of anything to improve or initiate growth to replenish job losses. He also a costly war in Iraq that he wanted to get out of as soon as possible and he pretty much milked out a couple of terms without anything else major occurring here while in office. I'd say the difference in the amount of spending between them is pretty obvious.
The people own whatever personal goods that are made available to the public under Communism. But, the people don't own anything of major value like homes or land or business's or previous metals or boats or cars or precious heirlooms or precious art and so forth. As far as your question why? I don't know why, you'll have to go back to go back to the beginning of civilization and ask them why.
We have a fight between a cat and a Jack Russell terrier. It's not clear, but both may have sized each other as prey. One is convinced that as a cat it should reasonably expect to overpower and devour anything its size or smaller. The other is convinced that as a dog it should reasonably expect to overpower and devour anything its size or smaller. What one ignores is how cat-like dogs can be and how dog-like cats can be.
Both creatures are for all practical purposes miniature versions of tigers. Terriers are the most tiger-like of dogs. This fight is the sort that could have arisen in a Roman circus between a tiger and a bear, except involving far-smaller creatures. This is a fight to avoid. Try breaking it up with your hands and you will be mauled.
I'll take the nozzle of a spray hose and shoot both, thank you.
I'm not a cat and he's not a dog and all you would do is end up getting hurt by one of us or both of us.
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Cats are Democrats and Dogs are Republicans, Classic Xer. You are a dog.
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(02-02-2021, 03:57 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Cats are Democrats and Dogs are Republicans, Classic Xer. You are a dog.
You people have the reasoning of small children.
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02-02-2021, 07:34 PM
(This post was last modified: 02-03-2021, 05:09 AM by pbrower2a.)
(02-02-2021, 03:19 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: (02-02-2021, 02:42 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: We have a fight between a cat and a Jack Russell terrier. It's not clear, but both may have sized each other as prey. One is convinced that as a cat it should reasonably expect to overpower and devour anything its size or smaller. The other is convinced that as a dog it should reasonably expect to overpower and devour anything its size or smaller. What one ignores is how cat-like dogs can be and how dog-like cats can be.
Both creatures are for all practical purposes miniature versions of tigers. Terriers are the most tiger-like of dogs. This fight is the sort that could have arisen in a Roman circus between a tiger and a bear, except involving far-smaller creatures. This is a fight to avoid. Try breaking it up with your hands and you will be mauled.
I'll take the nozzle of a spray hose and shoot both, thank you.
I'm not a cat and he's not a dog and all you would do is end up getting hurt by one of us or both of us.
More specifically I would spray both, even if one of the two combatants were one of my pets. Maybe especially. I have broken cat fights that way. I prefer that my pet get an unpleasant soaking to serious injuries and cost me big bucks at the veterinarian.
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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02-02-2021, 09:59 PM
(This post was last modified: 02-02-2021, 09:59 PM by Eric the Green.)
(02-02-2021, 04:00 PM)Einzige Wrote: (02-02-2021, 03:57 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Cats are Democrats and Dogs are Republicans, Classic Xer. You are a dog.
You people have the reasoning of small children.
No, most children are not so political.
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(02-02-2021, 04:00 PM)Einzige Wrote: (02-02-2021, 03:57 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Cats are Democrats and Dogs are Republicans, Classic Xer. You are a dog.
You people have the reasoning of small children.
... wrote the infant.
Intelligence is not knowledge and knowledge is not wisdom, but they all play well together.
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Communists have no sense of humor.
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(02-03-2021, 01:41 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Communists have no sense of humor.
Humor goes badly in totalitarian minds. I recall reading The Man in the High Castle, with the hero lamenting that there was little humor available. Bob Hope and Jimmy Durante... no Marx brothers, Milton Berle, Henny Youngman, Carl Reiner, Don Adams, Jerry Lewis, Alan King, Harvey Korman, Joan Rivers... see the connection? Philip K. Dick didn't mention Lucille Ball, Don Knotts, Andy Griffith, Dick Van Dyke, Mary Tyler Moore, Tim Conway, either, but they needed Jewish writers. I doubt that Monty Python-like sketches would survive in the Third Reich.
The Soviet system was good for jokes, but telling them was not good for freedom, let alone holding a desirable job. A spoof that I saw of the national anthem of the German Democratic Republic showed the absurdities of the system, but one line in that spoof went "Regime jokes get jail detention"...
I doubt that it is safe to crack much of a joke in Iran, Syria, or North Korea. I doubt that comedians poked much fun at Apartheid, either.
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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(02-02-2021, 12:48 PM)mamabug Wrote: (02-02-2021, 12:39 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: (02-01-2021, 11:48 AM)mamabug Wrote: (02-01-2021, 01:34 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Donald Trump left plenty of warning signs. He has huge funds and he gets attached to a porn star. He is taped talking about grabbing women by their "kitty cats". He mocks the handicapped. He denounces people for their religion and ethnicity. A bit fewer than 46% or the American electorate vote for him in 2016, and an even larger share vote for him in 2020. Character is destiny, and people of bad character eventually get bad results even if they have competence and talent. Just look at Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, and Phil Spector.
Again, nothing you say about him changes the fact that there were a number of people who voted for him despite all of that simply because, in a binary system, the things his administration might or might not accomplish was preferable than the policy agenda of his opponent.
The moral objectionability of Trump allowed the left to spend four years pretending that vote didn't happen and try to figure out how to jury rig the system so that it would never happen again instead of regrouping and determining why the loss actually happened and coming back with a stronger, better party that appealed to more than a bare majority of America. Continuing to act as if nobody except a racist would have voted for him is furthering this ostrich-like mindset and is only going to further the partisan divide.
But, I'm getting tired of being Cassandra so I may just have to stop engaging in discussions on this topic. I've made my points, consider them or not.
"a person whose valid warnings or concerns are disbelieved by others." Who is Cassandra depends on your views. People like me have been warning against free-market economics and the moral minority for well over 40 years.
To people like me, warning of further partisan division now is like warning about a storm that has already come and flooded the city. Why should I care? The only point is who is going to win.
I agree, lots of Republican and Republican-leaning voters supported Trump as a matter of course because he pledged to support their favorite policies, like pro-gun, anti-abortion, anti-tax, anti-immigrant, pro-business etc. Racism is a hidden factor in much of this, as well as religious conservatism, but it's not the only reason people voted for Trump. It just stirred up a lot of hate that was hidden before. People like me on the Left called him a fake president, because he was unqualified for the job, and we wondered why that was not a factor in peoples' votes. "Jury-rigging the system" on the Democrats' part consisted of efforts, only somewhat successful, to end the jury-rigging the Republicans and our founding fathers had done, especially voter suppression laws, voter-roll purges, poll closings in Democratic-voting areas and so on.
The Democrats did come back with a stronger party and a better candidate in 2020. Biden won over 7 million more votes than Trump, and still barely won the White House because of the outdated electoral college that favors small and former slave states. If the Democrats don't choose Harris to run in 2024, they should continue to get stronger, since they are interested in real problems, and since the country is becoming more diverse and less wedded to ancient ideologies. If Republicans cling to Trump they will lose ground and perhaps disappear. If the Democrats continue to give-in to or adopt Republican policies, they will continue to appear weak and ineffective and will also lose ground, and so will the nation. What needs to happen is that more people need to learn that Democratic Party policies work and are better than the Republican Party policies.
Trump blatantly appealed to racism throughout his 5-year political career, and did not care about police shootings more than he did about using supposed riots to stoke his vote. That helped his chances to win, and it also further divided the nation much more than correctly attributing his support in part to racism would.
Eric, I kinda like you, but sometimes you illustrate to me just how bat sh*t insane and immersed in a narrative disconnected from reality the modern left has become, at least when compared to those I admired in my youth. Some of the statements you casually throw out as Truth™ are exactly why I worry about the fate of dissenters in the remaining parts of the 4T and just how totalitarian the 1T will be.
Cassandra: I think you are projecting. You are afraid of what the Left in power might do, because it's what the Right-wing in power does. Who did what on January 6th? Who supports denying the results of a free and fair election so that the current president can just stay in power regardless of the results? Why do you rail against what the Left does, and not against what Trump and his Cult do?
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