The Partisan Divide on Issues

[pbrower2a]

(05-25-2021, 11:12 AM)Einzige Wrote: Lol. Yes, the Democrats don't serve Capital at all. They really are the Marxist proletarian Party the Republicans accuse them of being.

Dumkopf.

I am on the autistic spectrum. Although I am able to express sarcasm effectively, I tend to interpret what I read literally.

By the way -- many American capitalists are wise enough to recognize that profit maximization through monopolization of the economy, brutalization of managerial conditions, and driving wages to a starvation level is just perfect -- for making a proletarian revolution of the sort that exiles much of the economic elite and exterminates the rest possible. So some liberal tendencies keep capitalism from becoming a brutal but ultimately self-destructive plutocracy. Social orders that do that, like Imperial Russia, show catastrophic weaknesses in war (like an inadequate network of roads and communications and a precarious supply of food). People get cold, hungry, and scared, and they start to fall for any demagogue.

However much you may see the class struggle as the highest expression of human struggle, it is also one of potentially the most destructive... and it is in no means predictable in its result. Just think of Chile in the 1970's: the leftist struggle failed, and the country became a nightmare for anyone not already filthy rich or connected to the monstrous regime of Agosto Pinochet. For many, the inevitable triumph of the proletariat means little because some torturer has attached electrodes to their genitals and makes that the focus of life at the moment. The reactionaries can have their moments, as in the demonic Third Reich, when work is mandatory but feeding those who do the work is not.

My ideology is humanism. If socialism is necessary for the advancement of humanism, then I am a socialist. If it gets in the way, then I reject socialism.

[David Horn]

(05-25-2021, 01:39 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(05-25-2021, 09:34 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(05-24-2021, 09:56 PM)Einzige Wrote: Hahaha

Biden just said he wasn't going to cancel student loan debt.

At all.

What a worthless Reaganoid he is.

To cancel it, the debt needs to be absorbed by the government.  To do that, a spending bill needs to be created, passed by both houses and signed by the President (not likely in this environment) or the funding needs to be transferred from another source.  Any suggestions that would pass muster (i.e. the transfers need to be legal).

I wonder if such debts can be held to be unfair and just cancelled without the government paying for them.

Some can, I think.  Much of the school debt is really exorbitant interest layered on too high debt.  If the student or former student held the loan in abeyance while attending grad school or working an internship prior to getting a real job, the accrued interest may be huge.  Zeroing the interest and only repaying the principal might legal in those cases.

[pbrower2a]

The economic elites wanted college education to be fiendishly expensive as a deterrent... and interest high enough that if one ever did get a degree one would practically be in debt-bondage with no certainty of deriving any economic benefit. In most cultures education is seen as a desirable thing in its own right, but where many of the politicians need a large number of scared. superstitious ignoramuses to vote for them. college education might thwart that. The economic elites want people to think that if they have their union decertified and are 'freed' from union dues they will be able to put a nice gift under the Christmas tree. They want people to believe someone like Donald Trump, a fast-talking con-man who might take away their freedom and give them the dubious opportunity to be overworked and underpaid. So Trump didn't quite succeed? Some other anal sphincter might.

Much of America's problem is that it does not value education as a means of achieving rational thought and honorable behavior.

[Bob Butler 54]

I noted that MSNBC tonight tried to bring together McCarthyism from Joe McCarthy's time in the 1950s with Kevin McCarthy today.  The idea was that both were willing to smear or lie about things for partisan political advantage.

I'm not feeling great about the connection.  This isn't saying I'm happy about what Joe McCarthy did way back when, or that one should push the Big Lie today.  They just seem to be different themes.  There is such a weak connection other than the shared name that it isn't worth making.

Would anyone take it seriously?

[Einzige]

Why does anyone but the dumbest shitlib, the most docile straight-ticket voting Democrat, take MSNBC seriously?

[Bob Butler 54]

(05-27-2021, 10:06 PM)Einzige Wrote: Why does anyone but the dumbest shitlib, the most docile straight-ticket voting Democrat, take MSNBC seriously?

I could ask the same about people paying attention to Marxists these days.

Understanding the majority during a crisis does tell you where the wind is blowing.  Take Classic not hearing about Trump's legal problems.  If you shut out the majority opinion during a crisis, if you have to bypass and ignore what is coming, you are ultimately cutting yourself off from reality.  You wind up hoping for a revolution when nobody believes in it.

[David Horn]

(05-27-2021, 09:44 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: I noted that MSNBC tonight tried to bring together McCarthyism from Joe McCarthy's time in the 1950s with Kevin McCarthy today.  The idea was that both were willing to smear or lie about things for partisan political advantage.

I'm not feeling great about the connection.  This isn't saying I'm happy about what Joe McCarthy did way back when, or that one should push the Big Lie today.  They just seem to be different themes.  There is such a weak connection other than the shared name that it isn't worth making.

Would anyone take it seriously?

This sounds a lot more like a literary trick than a serious argument.  Yes, both were/are bad, but nothing more than that.  On the other hand, if my last name is McCarthy, I think I would see it coming.

[pbrower2a]

There was a long-time radio host on WJR Radio in Detroit, Joseph Priestly McCarthy. He used his real name but used his initials so that people would not confuse him with the Great Liar (then-Senator Joseph R. McCarthy) of Wisconsin. (To say that we have Senators now just as awful as Joe McCarthy is little exaggeration if at all. I doubt that I need to name names, except to say that Ron Johnson may have supplanted Joe McCarthy as the worst political heel ever from Wisconsin).

J P McCarthy was a great radio announcer from the days in which radio had the programs that distinguished one radio station from another, so it might have been a worthy exercise to listen to distant radio stations. From where I live I can get radio stations fro as far away as San Antonio, Winnipeg, and Montreal at night on the AM band due to ionospheric scatter. (I tried it in Phoenix and got radio stations out of Boise, San Francisco, Tulsa, and Dallas clearly. From Dallas I could get Chicago and Cincinnati clearly, Detroit poorly, and Los Angeles and Pittsburgh sporadically, Radio programming has been more homogenized due to Clear Channel belching out the late "Rash Libel" and his ilk... WJR long touted itself as the Great Voice of the Great Lakes... but it isn't so great now that Clear Channel has hijacked it and destroyed the once-distinctive programming.

[Einzige]

Four months of the Democrats’ rare and precious time with a trifecta in government has already gone by. They just sought to get a non-reconciliation bill passed by caving to every one of the Republicans’ demands and saw it get filibustered by Republicans anyway.

[pbrower2a]

It's going to take longer than four months to undo the damage that Donald Judas Trump and his minions did to America.

[Einzige]

(05-28-2021, 10:17 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: It's going to take longer than four months to undo the damage that Donald Judas Trump and his minions did to America.

I just explained to you that the Democrats (certainly deliberately) whiffed. They don't care. They exist to perpetuate Capital and nothing more.

[pbrower2a]

Democrats need capital. So do fascists for their aggressive warfare. So do Stalinists for their grandiose dreams of rushed development. Ao do plutocrats who seek to grind workers into industrial serfs. So does your ideology if it is to achieve anything.

Capital is the difference between ignorance and widespread knowledge (and competence)... primitive tracks and modern streets and highways... life-saving medical care and low life expectancy... and the potential for prosperity instead of an order that Hobbes rightly described in which life is nasty, short, and brutish.

[David Horn]

(05-28-2021, 09:51 PM)Einzige Wrote: Four months of the Democrats’ rare and precious time with a trifecta in government has already gone by. They just sought to get a non-reconciliation bill passed by caving to every one of the Republicans’ demands and saw it get filibustered by Republicans anyway.

If you have a solution to Joe Manchin and Kristin Sinema, pray tell us what it is.  They are both dually elected members of the US Senate, and fully cognizant of what they are doing... as much as I hate it too.  It's the Titanic effect: large ships with small rudders turn slowly -- often too slowly.  At some point, the the iceberg will become unavoidably obvious, and then we can proceed -- but not until.

[Bob Butler 54]

(05-29-2021, 09:53 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(05-28-2021, 09:51 PM)Einzige Wrote: Four months of the Democrats’ rare and precious time with a trifecta in government has already gone by. They just sought to get a non-reconciliation bill passed by caving to every one of the Republicans’ demands and saw it get filibustered by Republicans anyway.

If you have a solution to Joe Manchin and Kristin Sinema, pray tell us what it is.  They are both dually elected members of the US Senate, and fully cognizant of what they are doing... as much as I hate it too.  It's the Titanic effect: large ships with small rudders turn slowly -- often too slowly.  At some point, the the iceberg will become unavoidably obvious, and then we can proceed -- but not until.

I like the Titanic effect metaphor.  A big ship with a small rudder.  The question is which iceberg the ship will hit first?  Will the last few Democrats kill the Biden agenda in the name of bipartisanship when the Republicans are demonstrating obstructionism?  Will Trump continue to fail to rebuild an effective network platform and become irrelevant?  Will Trump and his allies continue losing legal difficulties?  Will the majority of a minority people who would rather have a racist presidency than a democracy go violent again?

I’m just not seeing a Marxist revolution as viable.  Lots of ice out there, but not that.

[David Horn]

(05-30-2021, 04:29 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(05-29-2021, 09:53 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(05-28-2021, 09:51 PM)Einzige Wrote: Four months of the Democrats’ rare and precious time with a trifecta in government has already gone by. They just sought to get a non-reconciliation bill passed by caving to every one of the Republicans’ demands and saw it get filibustered by Republicans anyway.

If you have a solution to Joe Manchin and Kristin Sinema, pray tell us what it is.  They are both dually elected members of the US Senate, and fully cognizant of what they are doing... as much as I hate it too.  It's the Titanic effect: large ships with small rudders turn slowly -- often too slowly.  At some point, the the iceberg will become unavoidably obvious, and then we can proceed -- but not until.

I like the Titanic effect metaphor.  A big ship with a small rudder.  The question is which iceberg the ship will hit first?  Will the last few Democrats kill the Biden agenda in the name of bipartisanship when the Republicans are demonstrating obstructionism?  Will Trump continue to fail to rebuild an effective network platform and become irrelevant?  Will Trump and his allies continue losing legal difficulties?  Will the majority of a minority people who would rather have a racist presidency than a democracy go violent again?

In a way, the failures of the Obama era may be the saving grace of Biden's time.  Obstructionism was the stake in the heart of the Obama agenda, and the reason, bipartisanship, was exactly the same.  If it happens this time, then the Democrats will have shown just how hopeless they really are. Hoping for redemption in the midterms is a fools errand, so they need to adjust and move ahead very soon.

Bob continued ... Wrote:I’m just not seeing a Marxist revolution as viable.  Lots of ice out there, but not that.

Agreed.  If we do so badly that we trigger a revolt, I doubt it will have a structure, per se.  Something more akin to chaos followed by repression is much more likely.  We are now totally awash in guns, and the lethality of the average weapon is dramatically greater than even 10 years ago.  Haters will hate, and shooters will shoot.

[pbrower2a]

At this point several state legislatures have been establishing "reforms" intended to stifle discussion at the upper levels of K-12 education unless favoring the Hard Right while taking measures to entrench their power by making voting more difficult. It is easy to place upon them a Marxist caricature of plutocrats who believe that no human suffering can ever be excessive so long as it enhances, enforces, or indulges a profit.

This is 3T behavior among elites, the sort that one expects among those who expect the proles to recognize the lash of unemployment and the cold, hunger, and homeless that soon follow as necessary for causing people to accept the dreadful as the defense against the horrific.

It is a reasonable assumption that capitalism is most defensible when it does not fit a Marxist stereotype. It is up to the economic elites to decide whether capitalism works for all or works as a straw-man argument for someone who wants a proletarian revolution.

[Einzige]

The idea that capitalism always assumes its rapacious Gilded Age form is not a Marxist stereotype. Marxists are well aware of all facets of capitalism, of all its myriad phases.

[Bob Butler 54]

(05-31-2021, 05:32 PM)Einzige Wrote: The idea that capitalism always assumes its rapacious Gilded Age form is not a Marxist stereotype. Marxists are well aware of all facets of capitalism, of all its myriad phases.

Supposedly.  At least, they have lots of corrections to the initial theory after the first several revolutions were hijacked by the Party.  But you have not incorporated non violence as a major way of changing things in the Information Age.  This puts another way to impose change in the works that the original theory did not incorporate, Marx putting the emphasis on the Industrial Age habit of using violence to implement change.

To me, it is as if you have a theory that ignores reality to remain viable.  You seem more interested in the theory than the truth of the theory.

[pbrower2a]

(05-31-2021, 05:32 PM)Einzige Wrote: The idea that capitalism always assumes its rapacious Gilded Age form is not a Marxist stereotype. Marxists are well aware of all facets of capitalism, of all its myriad phases.

It's about character... the rapacious plutocrat is a person of bad character. The executive who operates like a member of the Soviet nomenklatura is a bad character. 

I'm not going to say that the profit motive solves its own problems, which is exactly what the worst capitalists would tell us. I can excuse the plutocrats of the Gilded Age to the extent that they were genuine innovators introducing Americans to new objects and new (really better) ways of doing business. 

Capitalists and executives are at their worst when they show neither caution, conscience, or compassion. Such corresponds with the narcissistic personality that surges and ebbs at different times in the generational cycle. I thought that GI executives were far more humane than Boomer executives. I have known of both in business., With GI's one had a chance. With Boomers, if one ever knew any hardship you were assumed to be incompetent and disloyal even if the real cause is having known poverty as a child.

The best thing for working people will be for Boomer executives to retire. X executives will be unable to get away with as much -- and their startups are beginning to refresh capitalism.

[Bob Butler 54]

(06-01-2021, 12:21 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(05-31-2021, 05:32 PM)Einzige Wrote: The idea that capitalism always assumes its rapacious Gilded Age form is not a Marxist stereotype. Marxists are well aware of all facets of capitalism, of all its myriad phases.

It's about character... the rapacious plutocrat is a person of bad character. The executive who operates like a member of the Soviet nomenklatura is a bad character. 

I'm not going to say that the profit motive solves its own problems, which is exactly what the worst capitalists would tell us. I can excuse the plutocrats of the Gilded Age to the extent that they were genuine innovators introducing Americans to new objects and new (really better) ways of doing business. 

Capitalists and executives are at their worst when they show neither caution, conscience, or compassion. Such corresponds with the narcissistic personality that surges and ebbs at different times in the generational cycle. I thought that GI executives were far more humane than Boomer executives. I have known of both in business., With GI's one had a chance. With Boomers, if one ever knew any hardship you were assumed to be incompetent and disloyal even if the real cause is having known poverty as a child.

The best thing for working people will be for Boomer executives to retire. X executives will be unable to get away with as much -- and their startups are beginning to refresh capitalism.

The problem is that humans try to hoard resources, and that civilization has become far too large for the elites to identify with the working class. It doesn't matter how your social political system works, but the question is whether the elites or the people drive it. The problem is that the people in the Soviet system that won the revolutions are the sort of people who seek to win revolutions... and exclude others from getting near power. That has not been addressed and thus counting on violence to result in change futile.