Trump's people have founded their Party:

[Classic-Xer]

(09-12-2021, 09:09 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(09-11-2021, 04:38 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: I'm not a Neo Liberal. I'm a Classical Liberal.

Yes, I agreee.  You are an economic libertarian and a social conservative.  That means that the ones with the gold make the rules, in your view at least.  In my opinion you shouldn't cling too tight to that view.  It may prove toxic.

I assume that you believe that ones who have no gold or want more gold from others should be the ones who make the rules instead. Or, those who represent them should be the ones who make the rules. So, whose gold are you talking about? Are you talking about the rich peoples  gold, my gold, the neighbors gold or all of the gold? It's funny, other peoples gold doesn't matter to us but our gold seems to matter so much to you guys these days. So, what's the problem on the Democratic side? Ain't there enough gold on the Democratic side these days? Are there to many people on the Democratic side who have no gold these days? Are the ones in charge of distribution taking to much for themselves, their family members, friends and political contributors?  I suggest that you get your mind out of the LW gutter, it may prove toxic and possibly end your life faster than you'd prefer. We've already seen what the Left can do, wait til you see what all we can do in return when the time comes.  

As far as the Democratic side goes, who has the bulk of the gold and who makes the rules on the Democratic side? The same group, it's the upper echelon on the Democratic side right. Do you see that as much with the Republican side? Keep in mind, the Republican side has seventy some million people who own gold. Do you have any idea how much of a loss the Democrats are going to take when America declares its independence and parts ways with Acirema?

[pbrower2a]

(09-13-2021, 02:22 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(09-12-2021, 09:09 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(09-11-2021, 04:38 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: I'm not a Neo Liberal. I'm a Classical Liberal.

Yes, I agreee.  You are an economic libertarian and a social conservative.  That means that the ones with the gold make the rules, in your view at least.  In my opinion you shouldn't cling too tight to that view.  It may prove toxic.

I assume that you believe that ones who have no gold or want more gold from others should be the ones who make the rules instead. Or, those who represent them should be the ones who make the rules.

You miss the point of my citation of the late oil billionaire H. L. Hunt, who said

I believe in the golden rule: he who owns the gold makes the rules. 

That is a citation to mock. That is the reality behind power under a feudal order or in the slave system of the ante-bellum South. Those who own the assets have all the power to exploit and brutalize the helpless people who have no stake in the system and no means of self-defense. We are talking about the sorts of leaders who burn to death anyone who stages a peasant rebellion or a slave revolt.  Supposedly we are above that, but plutocrats of all times have never reliably shown any collective decency. We need some measure of democracy to mitigate the power of ownership over helpless people if we are not to resort to a revolution to bring about a Socialist regime of the Marxist-Leninist type.  

The essence of democracy is the separation of power from owning the assets, commanding the troops, administering the police, or leadership in some Party apparatus. In an extreme tyranny such as Stalin's Soviet Union, the leader of the Communist Party has control of the police, the military, and the state-owned economy. Under such a regime no life is safe. In an extreme tyranny such as Nazi Germany in which the Government differed from Stalin's Soviet Union in which the State does not own everything, ownership and operation of the assets is a privilege to be taken away should the owner or manager offend the regime. In Saudi Arabia, the House of Saud owns practically everything including the precious mineral rights and allows practically no political life. Every soldier and police official knows to whom he is ultimately responsible, and that person's surname is ibn-Saud. We know how that works. 

Our system decided that property rights were one defense against tyranny, as kings were typically taking land from opponents and giving it to their flunkies at convenient times to themselves. Government was not to take away small businesses at will unless for necessary public purpose (such as building a military base or establishing a post office or school, and then only with worthy compensation.  So should the state of Minnesota start looking at some farmland close to US 12 west of the Twin Cities to be transformed into Interstate 92 which would be a more direct route between Minneapolis and Seattle and you own that farmland, you might not be able to stop the seizure, but you will be compensated for your loss.  

But this said, we never established an order in which the biggest magnates of landed estates or giant industries got representation and the rest did not. In practice,     

He who owns the gold makes the rules

applies when the richest and most powerful people are able to dominate what has become the most important aspect of American political life: campaign finance. When those rich and powerful people become exceedingly ruthless and cruel, and when they can reliably find pols delighted to do their bidding out of a quest for some measure of fame that they could never get for lack of athletic, musical, literary, or artistic skill who can get elected due to the well-funded and well-managed campaigns behind them, then they do not need to run a football like Barry Sanders, create lyrics like those of Bob Dylan, or paint like Norman Rockwell did. They can be complete @ssholes nearly the opposite of us who must suffer with a smile in our employment. In return they live extremely well.

Quote:So, whose gold are you talking about? Are you talking about the rich peoples  gold, my gold, the neighbors gold or all of the gold? It's funny, other peoples gold doesn't matter to us but our gold seems to matter so much to you guys these days. So, what's the problem on the Democratic side? Ain't there enough gold on the Democratic side these days? Are there to many people on the Democratic side who have no gold these days? Are the ones in charge of distribution taking to much for themselves, their family members, friends and political contributors?  I suggest that you get your mind out of the LW gutter, it may prove toxic and possibly end your life faster than you'd prefer. We've already seen what the Left can do, wait til you see what all we can do in return when the time comes.

 

H.L. Hunt spoke figuratively, and not literally, about gold. Owning an ounce or two of gold makes one no more powerful than someone who owns a big share of some public utility that the government only pretends to regulate, but allows to do whatever it wants in setting rates. On my (Democratic) side we believe in the popular vote under the constraints of decency that we associate with the Constitution (as in no lynching, no expropriations of assets, or the like) that we find useful in stopping the worst tendencies in human nature from becoming public policy as in Stalin's Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, or Iraq under Satan Hussein.

Most people are intent on fair pay for their work, and most people know by now that a nursing home will eventually devour any potential inheritance that remains after death. You may see a Democratic gutter -- but your GOP gutter is now far worse. Your Party needs to discover that Humanity is not reliably a mass of people lacking in impulse control, driven by greed and sex, full of anger easy to manipulate. Most of us know our limitations. Most of us want the Government to be as decent as we are ourselves, if not a bit more sophisticated at such things as law that few of us fully understand and capable of doing some things that we cannot do ourselves.       

Quote:As far as the Democratic side goes, who has the bulk of the gold and who makes the rules on the Democratic side? The same group, it's the upper echelon on the Democratic side right. Do you see that as much with the Republican side? Keep in mind, the Republican side has seventy some million people who own gold. Do you have any idea how much of a loss the Democrats are going to take when America declares its independence and parts ways with Acirema?

The democratic idea is that he who has the votes through free and honest elections makes the rules, ideally with some empathy to voters.

[pbrower2a]

(09-09-2021, 04:56 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(09-09-2021, 03:24 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Minorities in urban areas got hit hard and early. They live in more crowded conditions, and COVID-19 spread rapidly in such places.

So, what should Biden do about them? I mean, they're the bulk of the Covid related problem now. So, how many illegals are vaccinated and how many of them are responsible for the current Covid crisis and how long do you think Gumby is going to get away with talking out his ass? To be honest, I don't care if Biden is removed by force or if he dies while in office or if America decides to cut bait and leave him stranded in DC with minimal at this point.

Joe Biden was not the President when COVID-19 started to bring mass death to America, first hitting the most crowded (and usually with large percentages of minority populations). I fault then-President Trump for botching the early response to COVID-19, and if his policies had any ethnic or religious animus, then he should be tried at the Hague Tribunal. I'm not saying anything definitive on that except the results almost look like that. It could be mere incompetence, as the fellow was even pushing medical quackery that a competent leader would have never promoted.   

I hope that it is clear to illegal aliens that they can get inoculated without fear of the INS. I have my vaccine 'passport', and it says nothing about citizenship. That 'passport' says nothing about citizenship. 

If an illegal alien goes through the medical system, then medical staff will most likely ask whether the person can show that he has been inoculated. I would expect that most medical staff are highly convincing anyone not in the Trump cult to get inoculated. So get your flu shot and get inoculated.

[pbrower2a]

(09-12-2021, 09:29 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(09-12-2021, 01:15 PM)sbarrera Wrote: I'm more in agreement with David's perspective (neoliberalism is economically libertarian and socially liberal) than with Eric's (neoliberalism is the platform of Trump/GOP).

I see neoliberalism as supporting globalization, freedom of capital and labor movement, and multiculturalism - which Trump supporters oppose.

I will acknowledge that maybe the Patriot Party isn't "Real America," as described by George Packer in his article, but perhaps "Free America." Actually, I see both factions visible in the Trump voting bloc:

Free America: you can't tell me what to do! (Anti-maskers/anti-vaxxers/anti-lockdowners.)
Real America: we need to go back to when America was great! (White Christian nationalists.)

Surely the energy from both of these factions was present at the Jan 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Again, far too much is made of Trump's views that are not neo-liberal on that one issue of trade. Trump is a nationalist, which is socially conservative. Neo-liberalism does not support multi-culturalism. Freedom of capital and labor movement, yes. Neo-liberals are aligned with social conservatives. There's just no way they can be called liberal on social issues. Maybe the Libertarian Party can be called that. But not neo-liberals, who are mostly Republicans. The Libertarian Party does not quite equal neo-liberalism. I can go with the idea that a relatively few neo-liberals are not passionately prejudiced or socially conservative. No political box can contain absolutely everyone. But the best we can say about them is that they are neutral, or don't care; not liberal. Given their strong agreement on welfare spending, neo-liberals and social conservatives are natural allies, and they vote the same way. I don't see how anyone can ignore that.

On my part, I believe in free trade. Not believing in anything other than his ego and in class privilege, Trump is delighted to sacrifice free trade to give himself a potential edge with voters who think that we can turn back the calendar to the time in which the factory was the most reliable exit from poverty and a way of making a middle income.  This said, protectionism is horribly inefficient because it makes inputs other than labor inordinately costly and because the inputs are inordinately costly such makes American products uncompetitive in the world economy. Tariffs are hidden taxes and as such hidden and often very high costs. 

Neoliberalism believes in restoring, to the extent possible, the conditions of early capitalism of the sort that paradoxically made Marxist revolutions possible. Neoliberals believe in loan-sharks but not welfare. If you don't believe me about loan-sharks, then just look at all the payday Loan places rarer as late as the 1970's.  

Quote:Calling the anti-vaxxers etc. "free America" is to buy into their tragically-false narrative. It is liberals and social liberals who uphold freedom, civil rights, voting rights, democracy, free speech and press. Trump anti-maskers do not support any of those things, and certainly their leader does not. And "real America" is far too complimentary a term for social conservatives. There is nothing real about superstition and prejudice.

It's in the same league with believing that seatbelts, DUI laws, and motorcycle helmets are menaces to freedom. Trump is closer to being a fascist than to being a Reagan-era neoliberal... although Reagan-era neoliberals and their financial backers have hitched their stars t o the "Trump Train". 

Quote:There's just no way to cut through the polarization and divide by trying to assign some ideas that real liberals might sympathize with to the other side. No, one side is right, and the other side is wrong. One side needs to win, and the other side needs to lose. We are 4T and we can't go back. We have to fight it out the best way we can.

 
That is the problem. One side is extremely wrong on much. The Right of course assumes that the Left is terribly wrong on abortion, LGBT rights, gender equity, the environment, multiculturalism (really the acceptance of cultures that are equally valid and from which people are unlikely to budge), secularism, science over superstition, reason over faith, and the necessary dignity of working people. To the Right, life for those not born to wealth and privilege are to suffer for those who are born to wealth and privilege, smile nonetheless, and be satisfied with vague promises of Pie in the Sky When You Die and damnation for anyone who fails to comply.  

Quote:If people want to say "be civil," I understand. A few people from the wrong side can be peeled off, and not by me calling them wrong. I understand. But that does not mean we can weasel our way out of the divide and the real problems by glossing over them.

I have peeled some people toward LGBT rights by explaining why I stand for them: law and order, without which any chance of personal safety and every civil liberty is cant. I have been gay-bashed, and if I could not prove to the satisfaction of some angry creep that I am straight I could see another and more important core issue: that that fellow could not recognize the shared humanity of LGBT people. Anyone can be gay-bashed, so if people start to recognize that homosexuality is in the mainstream we are all safer. That may not be the noblest reason for supporting LGBT rights, but it can fit conservative values. 

Now let me make my case against AGW. If you thought Stalin dispossessing free-hold farmers was bad, at least people could stay on those farms as serfs of the State. King Neptune will not let one stay on an inundated farm as a serf.  AGW will do much of what starts war and genocide, neither of which is good for more than a very short term for business.

[David Horn]

(09-13-2021, 02:22 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(09-12-2021, 09:09 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(09-11-2021, 04:38 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: I'm not a Neo Liberal. I'm a Classical Liberal.

Yes, I agreee.  You are an economic libertarian and a social conservative.  That means that the ones with the gold make the rules, in your view at least.  In my opinion you shouldn't cling too tight to that view.  It may prove toxic.

I assume that you believe that ones who have no gold or want more gold from others should be the ones who make the rules instead. Or, those who represent them should be the ones who make the rules. So, whose gold are you talking about? Are you talking about the rich peoples  gold, my gold, the neighbors gold or all of the gold? It's funny, other peoples gold doesn't matter to us but our gold seems to matter so much to you guys these days. So, what's the problem on the Democratic side? Ain't there enough gold on the Democratic side these days? Are there to many people on the Democratic side who have no gold these days? Are the ones in charge of distribution taking to much for themselves, their family members, friends and political contributors?  I suggest that you get your mind out of the LW gutter, it may prove toxic and possibly end your life faster than you'd prefer. We've already seen what the Left can do, wait til you see what all we can do in return when the time comes. 

Just so you know: there is plenty of wealth on both sides (all sides, assuming you split the GOP into Trumpers and Never Trumpers).  The point is simple: in a democracy it's people not money that's supposed to rule.  That hasn't been true for a long time.  Pick a topic.  A large majority (roughly 70%) favors vaccine mandates, but the minority is still blocking them -- even imposing anti-vacccine and anti-masking mandates.  On guns, roughly 60% wants actual gun controls, and over 80% want mandatory background checks.  On taxes, almost everyone wants higher taxes on the wealthy ... except the wealthy, of course.  I could go on, but you get the point.  Rule by the minority can't go on forever, but the monied interests have found these minority tubthumpers will back their desire to avoid taxes and regulation if they get to avoid vaccines, not wear masks and get to have as many guns as they wish, unimpeaded.

more from Classic-Xer Wrote:As far as the Democratic side goes, who has the bulk of the gold and who makes the rules on the Democratic side? The same group, it's the upper echelon on the Democratic side right. Do you see that as much with the Republican side? Keep in mind, the Republican side has seventy some million people who own gold. Do you have any idea how much of a loss the Democrats are going to take when America declares its independence and parts ways with Acirema?

Red America stands to lose a lot more if the country is split Red and Blue. Blue states have higher per capita income, higher per capita wealth and more people to boot.  Most of the poorest areas on the country are Bright Red.  Will your less poverty-stricken areas support your poor Red brothers and sisters?  Just asking.

[pbrower2a]

And, yes, "Red America" will have a brain drain.

Think of Spain after Franco took over. Before then, Spain was a cultural innovator. Franco's regime was the sort in which stupidity, unwilling to question the merits of the official faith, and blind obedience became the keys to survival. Many Spaniards emigrated, including (although this would have tragic consequences, as the Nazis and the Vichy regime would persecute them and even send many back to Spain for sure execution) to France. If they were fortunate they went to Britain or the New World where they were quite welcome.

After WWII, Spain was simply a place for an inexpensive holiday for people from richer countries. It got the rap as a backward country... well, it had a backward regime, did it not? Creativity could be a problem, as Franco had a medieval view of the world except for weapons, finance, and industrial technology. That sounds much like "Red America".

[Eric the Green]

(09-13-2021, 02:22 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(09-12-2021, 09:09 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(09-11-2021, 04:38 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: I'm not a Neo Liberal. I'm a Classical Liberal.

Yes, I agreee.  You are an economic libertarian and a social conservative.  That means that the ones with the gold make the rules, in your view at least.  In my opinion you shouldn't cling too tight to that view.  It may prove toxic.

I assume that you believe that ones who have no gold or want more gold from others should be the ones who make the rules instead. Or, those who represent them should be the ones who make the rules. So, whose gold are you talking about? Are you talking about the rich peoples  gold, my gold, the neighbors gold or all of the gold? It's funny, other peoples gold doesn't matter to us but our gold seems to matter so much to you guys these days. So, what's the problem on the Democratic side? Ain't there enough gold on the Democratic side these days? Are there to many people on the Democratic side who have no gold these days? Are the ones in charge of distribution taking to much for themselves, their family members, friends and political contributors?  I suggest that you get your mind out of the LW gutter, it may prove toxic and possibly end your life faster than you'd prefer. We've already seen what the Left can do, wait til you see what all we can do in return when the time comes.  

As far as the Democratic side goes, who has the bulk of the gold and who makes the rules on the Democratic side? The same group, it's the upper echelon on the Democratic side right. Do you see that as much with the Republican side? Keep in mind, the Republican side has seventy some million people who own gold. Do you have any idea how much of a loss the Democrats are going to take when America declares its independence and parts ways with Acirema?

The point of the saying is, money (or who has it) should not solely determine policy. Policy (the rules) should be based on what is best for the country. Not to protect someone's gold.

Your side will take more loss, because the blue side pays more in taxes, and the red side gets the most spending and welfare. That is well-known, although the fact contradicts your anti-welfare for the poor philosophy.

If the two Americas, red and blue, split up, with some additional geographic adjustment, it means each side will have more freedom to set its own policies about many things. If we part ways agreeably, there will probably still be trade between the blue states and the red states; why not? The intellectual property from the blue states will still be available to people in red states, and the agricultural products from the red states will still be available to the blue states. There may be tarriffs, or there may be a free trade zone. We even may be military allies. We still share much in American traditions. 

We may even re-unite, once you see the errors of your ways. I would predict a sharp decline in GNP and living standards in the red states, which are already lower than in the blue states. Many ethnic minorities will leave the red states, and blue states will benefit from immigration. The brain drain from red states will continue too, and a severe labor shortage too. You guys will come crawling back.

The big corporations, whose leaders now live in blue states, but whose political power comes from red states, will see their bosses have to move away from their residences on the coasts and go live in Alabama and Texas, like Elon Musk did. They will then pay lower taxes, which could benefit them, but their business will receive much less in social capital like education and physical infrastructure that benefits them.

As for global warming, I might assume that while the blue states are now free to make rapid shifts to renewable energy, electric cars, and reforestation, and reform their industries and what they make, the red states will contribute less to global warming too just because of their severe economic decline in all their sectors. They have less industry to begin with.

[pbrower2a]

All in all, the polarization that we now see is likely to come to an end when it becomes a losing proposition for one side. Demographic trends disfavor the "Red" side. Even recent COVID-19 deaths are strongly to the detriment of the Red Side of the political spectrum.

[Eric the Green]

Facebook bots have a trouble with my posts referring to blue states and red states. A friend suggested that I use "orinje" for red instead to confuse the bots. I occurs to me that the Patriot Party, the party of trumpers, if it becomes a third-party contender that could carry states in a presidential election, could be represented by the color Orange, while Republicans stay red and Democrats blue. So orange (or orinje) states, red states, and blue states That would be fun, and the blue side would win that way too!

[David Horn]

(09-13-2021, 01:09 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Facebook bots have a trouble with my posts referring to blue states and red states. A friend suggested that I use "orinje" for red instead to confuse the bots. I occurs to me that the Patriot Party, the party of trumpers, if it becomes a third-party contender that could carry states in a presidential election, could be represented by the color Orange, while Republicans stay red and Democrats blue. So orange (or orinje) states, red states, and blue states  That would be fun, and the blue side would win that way too!

Just change to other words that mean the same.  Crimson has to be OK because Alabama football can't be ignored.  For Blue, Azure is a good choice.  The wordbots can't block everything! 

[Classic-Xer]

(09-13-2021, 11:35 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: The point of the saying is, money (or who has it) should not solely determine policy. Policy (the rules) should be based on what is best for the country. Not to protect someone's gold.

Your side will take more loss, because the blue side pays more in taxes, and the red side gets the most spending and welfare. That is well-known, although the fact contradicts your anti-welfare for the poor philosophy.

If the two Americas, red and blue, split up, with some additional geographic adjustment, it means each side will have more freedom to set its own policies about many things. If we part ways agreeably, there will probably still be trade between the blue states and the red states; why not? The intellectual property from the blue states will still be available to people in red states, and the agricultural products from the red states will still be available to the blue states. There may be tarriffs, or there may be a free trade zone. We even may be military allies. We still share much in American traditions. 

We may even re-unite, once you see the errors of your ways. I would predict a sharp decline in GNP and living standards in the red states, which are already lower than in the blue states. Many ethnic minorities will leave the red states, and blue states will benefit from immigration. The brain drain from red states will continue too, and a severe labor shortage too. You guys will come crawling back.

The big corporations, whose leaders now live in blue states, but whose political power comes from red states, will see their bosses have to move away from their residences on the coasts and go live in Alabama and Texas, like Elon Musk did. They will then pay lower taxes, which could benefit them, but their business will receive much less in social capital like education and physical infrastructure that benefits them.

As for global warming, I might assume that while the blue states are now free to make rapid shifts to renewable energy, electric cars, and reforestation, and reform their industries and what they make, the red states will contribute less to global warming too just because of their severe economic decline in all their sectors. They have less industry to begin with.

I can tell that you're not using much logic and showing obvious signs associated with brain drain too.. Do we think at all alike or do we think differently and tend to view things the opposite way? Dude, whatever the blues do, the reds will be doing the opposite. You think I'm backwards minded.  I think you're backwards minded and that's the way it's been all along. What's the chance of an amicable split occurring these days? I'd say the chances of that are none at this point. It's pretty clear that the Democrats want/need control over everything because they need to gain control of everything to ensure their system remains in place and stays above water so to speak.

[Classic-Xer]

(09-13-2021, 10:39 AM)David Horn Wrote: Red America stands to lose a lot more if the country is split Red and Blue. Blue states have higher per capita income, higher per capita wealth and more people to boot.  Most of the poorest areas on the country are Bright Red.  Will your less poverty-stricken areas support your poor Red brothers and sisters?  Just asking.

The blue states have a higher per capita now because our wealth is included right now. I'm pretty sure that you are as familiar with the government related factions associated with the Democrats as me at this point. I'm pretty sure that you know the bulk of their wealth is directly related to government funding as well. As I've said, the big government Democrats have set up a pretty good gig for themselves. The poorer areas have people who have nothing and living off the dole and working people who aren't as impoverished as them who have no interest in ending up like them or paying for them either.

[Classic-Xer]

(09-13-2021, 10:39 AM)David Horn Wrote: Just so you know: there is plenty of wealth on both sides (all sides, assuming you split the GOP into Trumpers and Never Trumpers).  The point is simple: in a democracy it's people not money that's supposed to rule.  That hasn't been true for a long time.  Pick a topic.  A large majority (roughly 70%) favors vaccine mandates, but the minority is still blocking them -- even imposing anti-vacccine and anti-masking mandates.  On guns, roughly 60% wants actual gun controls, and over 80% want mandatory background checks.  On taxes, almost everyone wants higher taxes on the wealthy ... except the wealthy, of course.  I could go on, but you get the point.  Rule by the minority can't go on forever, but the monied interests have found these minority tubthumpers will back their desire to avoid taxes and regulation if they get to avoid vaccines, not wear masks and get to have as many guns as they wish, unimpeaded.

According to Eric, there isn't enough wealth to go around/trickling down on the Democratic side. Eric has been saying/telling me that about the Democratic side for many years. So, why does the 70% favor vaccine mandates when they're already vaccinated themselves and the vast majority of those who get infected aren't severely impacted and don't end up in the hospital or end up dying from it? I think the poll you referring to seems pretty skewed in favor of vaccine mandates. Oh well, I guess revenues and long term survival no longer matter to the corporations/institutions that are going along with the Democrats and supporting/implementing their vaccine mandates these days. As far as gun controls, the gun controls that already are in place didn't stop the last mass shootings that took place (all done by people who passed their ground checks) or the shootings and the gun related crimes that are on the rise and taking place in blue cities every day either.

[pbrower2a]

(09-14-2021, 12:09 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: [quote='Eric the Green' pid='78728' dateline='1631550948']


The point of the saying is, money (or who has it) should not solely determine policy. Policy (the rules) should be based on what is best for the country. Not to protect someone's gold.

Your side will take more loss, because the blue side pays more in taxes, and the red side gets the most spending and welfare. That is well-known, although the fact contradicts your anti-welfare for the poor philosophy.

If the two Americas, red and blue, split up, with some additional geographic adjustment, it means each side will have more freedom to set its own policies about many things. If we part ways agreeably, there will probably still be trade between the blue states and the red states; why not? The intellectual property from the blue states will still be available to people in red states, and the agricultural products from the red states will still be available to the blue states. There may be tarriffs, or there may be a free trade zone. We even may be military allies. We still share much in American traditions. 

We may even re-unite, once you see the errors of your ways. I would predict a sharp decline in GNP and living standards in the red states, which are already lower than in the blue states. Many ethnic minorities will leave the red states, and blue states will benefit from immigration. The brain drain from red states will continue too, and a severe labor shortage too. You guys will come crawling back.

The big corporations, whose leaders now live in blue states, but whose political power comes from red states, will see their bosses have to move away from their residences on the coasts and go live in Alabama and Texas, like Elon Musk did. They will then pay lower taxes, which could benefit them, but their business will receive much less in social capital like education and physical infrastructure that benefits them.

As for global warming, I might assume that while the blue states are now free to make rapid shifts to renewable energy, electric cars, and reforestation, and reform their industries and what they make, the red states will contribute less to global warming too just because of their severe economic decline in all their sectors. They have less industry to begin with.

Quote:I can tell that you're not using much logic

Logic (as reasoning) is necessary, but it isn't enough.  It's necessary to also have a solid factual basis and appropriate values. If you want a literary or cinematic example, then just recall Forrest Gump, whose  namesake character has conventional values and reliable logic even if he lacks an understanding of nuance and is utterly naïve about the consequences of integrity and observations of the obvious. 

Much of the nuance that many of us have is wrong. As with his childhood sweetheart Jenny, one can think oneself into trouble and have dark secrets in the past that mess one up. Forrest's mother at least taught him right, and Jenny's father taught her the very wrong lessons by sexually molesting her. Everything that Forrest does turns out well... but Jenny ends up dead from promiscuity and drugs. HIV/AIDS, of course.  

Quote:and showing obvious signs associated with brain drain too..

You do not understand what "brain drain" is. Brain drain is the condition in which a country loses its Best and Brightest, its creative people and technical experts because smart people seek to leave because the political system makes life uncomfortable for smart, talented, and creative people. The system requires that people accept as truth indefensible or objectionable ideas that frustrate what those smart people do, humiliates them, or restricts their activities. Maybe the taxes are too high or the system offers a horrid educational system (smart people typically want their kids to be well educated.  It could be a populist devaluation of intellectual activity. It could be an ideology that demands that people pretend to believe in pseudoscience or superstition. It could be perverse taxation or a scheme to underpay them. As in Nazi Germany it could be religious bigotry. 

A hint: in the 1920's, Germany and the USA were rivals in cinematic achievements. In both countries Jews were big players in cinema as writers, directors, and actors. Beginning in 1933 Josef Goebbels ousted Jews from German cinema. Most of those Jews ended up in the USA, and many of them fared quite well. Those German Jews strengthened American cinema in the middle-to-late 1930's... and later. While German cinema lost its spark, American cinema went into its Golden Age. Jews played a huge role... and many of those had recently been part of the glory of German cinema. Today you can still watch American cinema from around 1940 and, despite the primitive special effects, recognize a consistently high quality even when the movies had to accommodate a rigid code on on-screen behavior. 

Among such people were the actors Peter Lorre and the actress Hedy Lamarr (Jewish parents, so she was considered "racially" Jewish and thus to be murdered if she had stayed in the Devil's Reich) and Karl Freund, a cinematographer of the highly innovative Metropolis of 1926 and 1927 (a definitive masterpiece of pre-Nazi German cinema) who created the flat lighting technique introduced on I Love Lucy  still in use nearly seventy years later. Desi Arnaz, who was not Jewish but fled in another brain drain from Cuba, saw what Karl Freund could do with his cinematography on the model sitcom.   

I still love that cinematic aesthetic.           

Quote:Do we think at all alike or do we think differently and tend to view things the opposite way?

You, Classic X'er, obviously do not think as we do. At least we know that there is much that we do not know.  You exemplify the Dunning-Kruger effect of not knowing your limitations.

Quote:Dude, whatever the blues do, the reds will be doing the opposite.

Doing the opposite of the smart people is something to be done only with great care and while convinced that people usually right are  wrong at that time. When it is effective, it is almost invariably smart, learned people who well know the limitations of the existing level of expert knowledge who 'break the rules' successfully. Efforts by cranks almost invariably fail and usually prove impossible by existing standards of knowledge. My side typically relies upon such things as peer review, double-blind tests, and statistical  measures of the likeliness that we are right. "Right" and "wrong" in the world that I wish that I were in has margins of error and percentages of likelihood of error. 

As an example, magnetism and electrical attraction are understood in physics (those two phenomena are related), and so is gravitation, which is not so clearly related, dissipates as the square of the distance  from the attraction. That square is an exponent, and the college physics text that I had in the 1970's  told me that gravitation, electric charge, and magnetism act in accordance with an exponent that has been measured to a precision of one in one billion. The measure may be more precise now, but that is convincing. If you want to believe that the exp0onent is something other than 2 then it can't be off by much.   

Hard sciences such as physics and chemistry may be close to exact, but not absolutely exact. (Absolute exactitude is for mathematics, which works with perfect ideals. The material world is messier than that), With social sciences things get murkier. Human nature is incredibly complex. Even with such imprecision one can be very, very wrong, about like a baseball catcher going backward as if to catch a foul pop fly when the ball is hit as a home run. 
 

Quote:You think I'm backwards minded.  I think you're backwards minded and that's the way it's been all along.

 
On this you are completely wrong. Tradition is a valid fallback when things go terribly wrong. In classical music, many great composers have turned to the folk tradition (and even bird song, which is older than we are) to get melodic and rhythmic coherence when music gets excessively cerebral for enjoyment. One religious tradition has been debating the fine points of morality for over 2500 years. Would that the Germans have heeded these people between 1933 and 1945 instead of consigning them to shooting pits and gas chambers! (Yes, yes, yes... I know that German cuisine is heavy on pork sausages, but that is not a problem with Reform).  Let's not forget that the United States is not so much a graveyard of traditions as it is a place with multiple traditions that in our multicultural world do not merge. Many of us who don't have a particular tie to any one of those traditions pick and choose. One of my cousins has a beautiful Japanese-style rock garden. No, I have no close relatives of Japanese origin even by marriage.     

Quote:What's the chance of an amicable split occurring these days? I'd say the chances of that are none at this point.

Have you considered the possibility that one side or the other will become irrelevant as it loses supporters and fails to win new ones? The current GOP skews old, white, and unlearned. Consider a consumer product or service; if its customer base is aging, then that commodity must have one group of aging people supplanting those who die off. As an example, music of certain performers (Guy Lombardo, Lawrence Welk, etc.) has lost its clientele. Their GI and early Silent audiences have largely died off, and such music does not appeal to any younger groups. Records of such music end up in thrift shops as donations, and they do not move even if cheap. Oddly, Big Band music does have some younger listeners who can buy CD's of such music. Then again, Big Band music typically works at several different aesthetic levels at once, so it is "evergreen". See also "Haydn" and "Mozart", both of whom wrote music with similar qualities. If you wonder why Montgomery Ward is gone, Sears is practically gone, and JC Penney is on life support it is because those stores ended up with customer bases that got increasingly "old". In the 1980's it mattered little that the average customer was in his late 50's because such people were the customers. Today such a clientele is mostly deceased. 

Ghosts are not a reliable customer base -- in case you are backward enough to believe in ghosts. .     

With political agendas, the GOP is becoming increasingly old, white, and ill-educated as America becomes less white and better educated... and the GOP is not finding new younger voters to replace those dying off. This is the opposite of the demographic reality in the 1970's through the 1990's when the New Deal coalition (largely GI) died off without replacement. Boomers, especially in the Mountain and Deep South abandoned the rational, service-based agenda of the New Deal for something amenable to Fundamentalist Christianity. 

This is 1976:

   

This is 2020:




That's a difference of nine electoral votes between 1976 and 2020 in total, but a very different look on the map. It is safe to say that "the map" of a bare D win of a Presidency in 2020 is very different from a bare D win in 1976. Carter won every former Confederate state except for Virginia, but nothing west of the Mississippi River except for Hawaii and Minnesota. 

America is becoming better educated as more people get college degrees. Although white people and men as a whole are predominantly Republican, even white males now vote majority D. Voters over 55 are the base of the GOP, but younger voters are not replacing them in the electorate. The Millennial generation is heavily D, and its voting rate is rising... as usually happens with any generation approaching middle age. As Millennial adults start entering races for high offices (House, Senate, state governorships) and start taking Cabinet positions, such will intensify the D trend. America is becoming less white through miscegenation. To put it as bluntly as possible, black men can obviously do everything that white men can do except to sire white children, and black women can do everything that white women can do except to bear white children. Biracial adults so far are more loyal to the politics of black people than to te politics of white people. As for Hispanics, Hispanics are able to assimilate white spouses into their political culture. 

Something worth knowing about well-educated voters is that they are not swing voters.   

Quote:It's pretty clear that the Democrats want/need control over everything because they need to gain control of everything to ensure their system remains in place and stays above water so to speak.

No. Parties that hold the Presidency usually lose seats in the House and Senate in midterm elections, and nothing so far indicates that anyone can expect any difference from that patter... at least so far. We had three two-term Presidencies in succession with an alternation of the Presidency after the two-term Presidency, and 2020  was close to giving Donald Trump a second term. I expect Republicans and especially Republican front groups to exploit every possible weakness in any incumbent Democrat. If 2010 and 2014 are any indication the Republican nominee will run a plain-folks campaign (show the family and say banalities) while the GOP front groups do character-assassination. The front groups will support the most reactionary politicians possible, ideally those who most fervently believe that the political ideal is 

He who owns the gold makes the rules.

Plutocracy, plutocracy, Rah-rah-rah! Those front groups dream of a world of crony capitalists who can wax fat off privatization on the cheap and super-cheap labor that has no union or sympathetic government to protect them.   Those front groups are mirror-image Marxists, the sorts of people who believe like Marxists that capitalism is grave suffering for the masses on behalf of irresponsible elites, and differ from Marxists only in believing that such is good. The front groups will be flush in cash, and in recent decades,. money does not talk in politics; it shouts and it rules.

[David Horn]

(09-14-2021, 03:47 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(09-13-2021, 10:39 AM)David Horn Wrote: Red America stands to lose a lot more if the country is split Red and Blue. Blue states have higher per capita income, higher per capita wealth and more people to boot.  Most of the poorest areas on the country are Bright Red.  Will your less poverty-stricken areas support your poor Red brothers and sisters?  Just asking.

The blue states have a higher per capita now because our wealth is included right now. I'm pretty sure that you are as familiar with the government related factions associated with the Democrats as me at this point. I'm pretty sure that you know the bulk of their wealth is directly related to government funding as well. As I've said, the big government Democrats have set up a pretty good gig for themselves. The poorer areas have people who have nothing and living off the dole and working people who aren't as impoverished as them who have no interest in ending up like them or paying for them either.

Actually, most of the income derived by the Blue members of society comes from the service sector: engineeering, medicine, law, media and high tech (among others).  That will continue to exist in Blue areas, because most if not all those occupations are dependent on urban infrastructure.  Occupations with higher Red concentratin will also continue to exist in Blue areas, because, like the Blue occupations, they are located in urban areas at much higher pay.  I don't see peple uprooting and moving just to be with kindred spirits.  If they do, then things will get messy on your side more than mine.  For example, medical staff at all levels are getting burned-out by vaccine obstinancy, and few will stay behind to keep you helathy if the environment is toxic.  Your choice.

[Classic-Xer]

(09-14-2021, 08:56 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(09-14-2021, 12:09 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(09-13-2021, 11:35 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: The point of the saying is, money (or who has it) should not solely determine policy. Policy (the rules) should be based on what is best for the country. Not to protect someone's gold.

Your side will take more loss, because the blue side pays more in taxes, and the red side gets the most spending and welfare. That is well-known, although the fact contradicts your anti-welfare for the poor philosophy.

If the two Americas, red and blue, split up, with some additional geographic adjustment, it means each side will have more freedom to set its own policies about many things. If we part ways agreeably, there will probably still be trade between the blue states and the red states; why not? The intellectual property from the blue states will still be available to people in red states, and the agricultural products from the red states will still be available to the blue states. There may be tarriffs, or there may be a free trade zone. We even may be military allies. We still share much in American traditions. 

We may even re-unite, once you see the errors of your ways. I would predict a sharp decline in GNP and living standards in the red states, which are already lower than in the blue states. Many ethnic minorities will leave the red states, and blue states will benefit from immigration. The brain drain from red states will continue too, and a severe labor shortage too. You guys will come crawling back.

The big corporations, whose leaders now live in blue states, but whose political power comes from red states, will see their bosses have to move away from their residences on the coasts and go live in Alabama and Texas, like Elon Musk did. They will then pay lower taxes, which could benefit them, but their business will receive much less in social capital like education and physical infrastructure that benefits them.

As for global warming, I might assume that while the blue states are now free to make rapid shifts to renewable energy, electric cars, and reforestation, and reform their industries and what they make, the red states will contribute less to global warming too just because of their severe economic decline in all their sectors. They have less industry to begin with.

Quote:I can tell that you're not using much logic

Logic (as reasoning) is necessary, but it isn't enough.  It's necessary to also have a solid factual basis and appropriate values. If you want a literary or cinematic example, then just recall Forrest Gump, whose  namesake character has conventional values and reliable logic even if he lacks an understanding of nuance and is utterly naïve about the consequences of integrity and observations of the obvious. 

Much of the nuance that many of us have is wrong. As with his childhood sweetheart Jenny, one can think oneself into trouble and have dark secrets in the past that mess one up. Forrest's mother at least taught him right, and Jenny's father taught her the very wrong lessons by sexually molesting her. Everything that Forrest does turns out well... but Jenny ends up dead from promiscuity and drugs. HIV/AIDS, of course.  

Quote:and showing obvious signs associated with brain drain too..

You do not understand what "brain drain" is. Brain drain is the condition in which a country loses its Best and Brightest, its creative people and technical experts because smart people seek to leave because the political system makes life uncomfortable for smart, talented, and creative people. The system requires that people accept as truth indefensible or objectionable ideas that frustrate what those smart people do, humiliates them, or restricts their activities. Maybe the taxes are too high or the system offers a horrid educational system (smart people typically want their kids to be well educated.  It could be a populist devaluation of intellectual activity. It could be an ideology that demands that people pretend to believe in pseudoscience or superstition. It could be perverse taxation or a scheme to underpay them. As in Nazi Germany it could be religious bigotry. 

A hint: in the 1920's, Germany and the USA were rivals in cinematic achievements. In both countries Jews were big players in cinema as writers, directors, and actors. Beginning in 1933 Josef Goebbels ousted Jews from German cinema. Most of those Jews ended up in the USA, and many of them fared quite well. Those German Jews strengthened American cinema in the middle-to-late 1930's... and later. While German cinema lost its spark, American cinema went into its Golden Age. Jews played a huge role... and many of those had recently been part of the glory of German cinema. Today you can still watch American cinema from around 1940 and, despite the primitive special effects, recognize a consistently high quality even when the movies had to accommodate a rigid code on on-screen behavior. 

Among such people were the actors Peter Lorre and the actress Hedy Lamarr (Jewish parents, so she was considered "racially" Jewish and thus to be murdered if she had stayed in the Devil's Reich) and Karl Freund, a cinematographer of the highly innovative Metropolis of 1926 and 1927 (a definitive masterpiece of pre-Nazi German cinema) who created the flat lighting technique introduced on I Love Lucy  still in use nearly seventy years later. Desi Arnaz, who was not Jewish but fled in another brain drain from Cuba, saw what Karl Freund could do with his cinematography on the model sitcom.   

I still love that cinematic aesthetic.           

Quote:Do we think at all alike or do we think differently and tend to view things the opposite way?

You, Classic X'er, obviously do not think as we do. At least we know that there is much that we do not know.  You exemplify the Dunning-Kruger effect of not knowing your limitations.

Quote:Dude, whatever the blues do, the reds will be doing the opposite.

Doing the opposite of the smart people is something to be done only with great care and while convinced that people usually right are  wrong at that time. When it is effective, it is almost invariably smart, learned people who well know the limitations of the existing level of expert knowledge who 'break the rules' successfully. Efforts by cranks almost invariably fail and usually prove impossible by existing standards of knowledge. My side typically relies upon such things as peer review, double-blind tests, and statistical  measures of the likeliness that we are right. "Right" and "wrong" in the world that I wish that I were in has margins of error and percentages of likelihood of error. 

As an example, magnetism and electrical attraction are understood in physics (those two phenomena are related), and so is gravitation, which is not so clearly related, dissipates as the square of the distance  from the attraction. That square is an exponent, and the college physics text that I had in the 1970's  told me that gravitation, electric charge, and magnetism act in accordance with an exponent that has been measured to a precision of one in one billion. The measure may be more precise now, but that is convincing. If you want to believe that the exp0onent is something other than 2 then it can't be off by much.   

Hard sciences such as physics and chemistry may be close to exact, but not absolutely exact. (Absolute exactitude is for mathematics, which works with perfect ideals. The material world is messier than that), With social sciences things get murkier. Human nature is incredibly complex. Even with such imprecision one can be very, very wrong, about like a baseball catcher going backward as if to catch a foul pop fly when the ball is hit as a home run. 
 

Quote:You think I'm backwards minded.  I think you're backwards minded and that's the way it's been all along.

 
On this you are completely wrong. Tradition is a valid fallback when things go terribly wrong. In classical music, many great composers have turned to the folk tradition (and even bird song, which is older than we are) to get melodic and rhythmic coherence when music gets excessively cerebral for enjoyment. One religious tradition has been debating the fine points of morality for over 2500 years. Would that the Germans have heeded these people between 1933 and 1945 instead of consigning them to shooting pits and gas chambers! (Yes, yes, yes... I know that German cuisine is heavy on pork sausages, but that is not a problem with Reform).  Let's not forget that the United States is not so much a graveyard of traditions as it is a place with multiple traditions that in our multicultural world do not merge. Many of us who don't have a particular tie to any one of those traditions pick and choose. One of my cousins has a beautiful Japanese-style rock garden. No, I have no close relatives of Japanese origin even by marriage.     

Quote:What's the chance of an amicable split occurring these days? I'd say the chances of that are none at this point.

Have you considered the possibility that one side or the other will become irrelevant as it loses supporters and fails to win new ones? The current GOP skews old, white, and unlearned. Consider a consumer product or service; if its customer base is aging, then that commodity must have one group of aging people supplanting those who die off. As an example, music of certain performers (Guy Lombardo, Lawrence Welk, etc.) has lost its clientele. Their GI and early Silent audiences have largely died off, and such music does not appeal to any younger groups. Records of such music end up in thrift shops as donations, and they do not move even if cheap. Oddly, Big Band music does have some younger listeners who can buy CD's of such music. Then again, Big Band music typically works at several different aesthetic levels at once, so it is "evergreen". See also "Haydn" and "Mozart", both of whom wrote music with similar qualities. If you wonder why Montgomery Ward is gone, Sears is practically gone, and JC Penney is on life support it is because those stores ended up with customer bases that got increasingly "old". In the 1980's it mattered little that the average customer was in his late 50's because such people were the customers. Today such a clientele is mostly deceased. 

Ghosts are not a reliable customer base -- in case you are backward enough to believe in ghosts. .     

With political agendas, the GOP is becoming increasingly old, white, and ill-educated as America becomes less white and better educated... and the GOP is not finding new younger voters to replace those dying off. This is the opposite of the demographic reality in the 1970's through the 1990's when the New Deal coalition (largely GI) died off without replacement. Boomers, especially in the Mountain and Deep South abandoned the rational, service-based agenda of the New Deal for something amenable to Fundamentalist Christianity. 

This is 1976:

   

This is 2020:




That's a difference of nine electoral votes between 1976 and 2020 in total, but a very different look on the map. It is safe to say that "the map" of a bare D win of a Presidency in 2020 is very different from a bare D win in 1976. Carter won every former Confederate state except for Virginia, but nothing west of the Mississippi River except for Hawaii and Minnesota. 

America is becoming better educated as more people get college degrees. Although white people and men as a whole are predominantly Republican, even white males now vote majority D. Voters over 55 are the base of the GOP, but younger voters are not replacing them in the electorate. The Millennial generation is heavily D, and its voting rate is rising... as usually happens with any generation approaching middle age. As Millennial adults start entering races for high offices (House, Senate, state governorships) and start taking Cabinet positions, such will intensify the D trend. America is becoming less white through miscegenation. To put it as bluntly as possible, black men can obviously do everything that white men can do except to sire white children, and black women can do everything that white women can do except to bear white children. Biracial adults so far are more loyal to the politics of black people than to te politics of white people. As for Hispanics, Hispanics are able to assimilate white spouses into their political culture. 

Something worth knowing about well-educated voters is that they are not swing voters.   

Quote:It's pretty clear that the Democrats want/need control over everything because they need to gain control of everything to ensure their system remains in place and stays above water so to speak.

No. Parties that hold the Presidency usually lose seats in the House and Senate in midterm elections, and nothing so far indicates that anyone can expect any difference from that patter... at least so far. We had three two-term Presidencies in succession with an alternation of the Presidency after the two-term Presidency, and 2020  was close to giving Donald Trump a second term. I expect Republicans and especially Republican front groups to exploit every possible weakness in any incumbent Democrat. If 2010 and 2014 are any indication the Republican nominee will run a plain-folks campaign (show the family and say banalities) while the GOP front groups do character-assassination. The front groups will support the most reactionary politicians possible, ideally those who most fervently believe that the political ideal is 

He who owns the gold makes the rules.

Plutocracy, plutocracy, Rah-rah-rah! Those front groups dream of a world of crony capitalists who can wax fat off privatization on the cheap and super-cheap labor that has no union or sympathetic government to protect them.   Those front groups are mirror-image Marxists, the sorts of people who believe like Marxists that capitalism is grave suffering for the masses on behalf of irresponsible elites, and differ from Marxists only in believing that such is good. The front groups will be flush in cash, and in recent decades,. money does not talk in politics; it shouts and it rules.

Pb, you are a white male that we aren't interested in keeping and supporting for the rest of your life. I mean, what good is a left wing partisan hack like yourself these days? You don't seem to realize that the party you support and believe will continue supporting through thick and thin is no longer the dominant white working class party that is was when you were a kid/teenager. It's mainly a racially driven anti-white party and a conglomeration of special interests/interest groups associated with government funding and interests controlling lawmakers and bureaucrats today. The Democratic party is basically a big shit sandwich that America has no interest in supporting or getting involved with today.
Now, I don't see a white caucus on the Democratic side yet. You (the white Democrats) are going to need one but I don't see one yet. I see a lot of minority factions who are joining forces now but I don't see a white faction to represent/protect the interests related to you guys and the gals too. America is going to see a race war on the Democratic side. Who is going to win it? I doubt the shrinking population of whites are going to win it. Will America intervene or will America remain idle for the most part and allow the racist Democratic factions to slug it out and kill each other off. Keep in mind, Acirema will no longer be associated with America and America will no longer be obligated to support it or protect it.

[pbrower2a]

(09-14-2021, 05:30 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(09-13-2021, 10:39 AM)David Horn Wrote: Just so you know: there is plenty of wealth on both sides (all sides, assuming you split the GOP into Trumpers and Never Trumpers).  The point is simple: in a democracy it's people not money that's supposed to rule.  That hasn't been true for a long time.  Pick a topic.  A large majority (roughly 70%) favors vaccine mandates, but the minority is still blocking them -- even imposing anti-vacccine and anti-masking mandates.  On guns, roughly 60% wants actual gun controls, and over 80% want mandatory background checks.  On taxes, almost everyone wants higher taxes on the wealthy ... except the wealthy, of course.  I could go on, but you get the point.  Rule by the minority can't go on forever, but the monied interests have found these minority tubthumpers will back their desire to avoid taxes and regulation if they get to avoid vaccines, not wear masks and get to have as many guns as they wish, unimpeaded.

According to Eric, there isn't enough wealth to go around/trickling down on the Democratic side.

The general assumption is that people will still need to work to achieve something. It is impossible to have strawberry shortcake if nobody picks the strawberries. Of course wealth is not itself a cause of prosperity. It becomes a cause of prosperity only if it is invested in something that generates income. Wealth that goes into building a castle or palace is good for spreading a little wealth as income once. 

But know well: technical innovations are making machines more efficient than raw labor in manufacturing of every kind. Fewer hours will need to be dedicated to toil, especially as raw labor. If the manufacturing of goods remains essential to prosperity, it is becoming less a share of the economy -- much as was so with agriculture. This said, agriculture is still essential to the American economy, and it keeps the cost of living down -- way down -- from where it would otherwise be. One state, Alaska, is particularly expensive as a place in which to live because practically all foodstuffs must be imported. 

So long as people have incentives, even if the banality of participation in a consumer culture, they will do things to generate income if they can. If they can't -- well, SNAP turns many potential shoplifters into profitable customers, and even the right-wing Walton family prefers such at Wal*Mart.     
 

Quote:Eric has been saying/telling me that about the Democratic side for many years. So, why does the 70% favor vaccine mandates when they're already vaccinated themselves and the vast majority of those who get infected aren't severely impacted and don't end up in the hospital or end up dying  from it?

I wear a seatbelt, and I rarely speed. I have good cause to expect people to wear seatbelts and to not speed.  

Quote:I think the poll you referring to seems pretty skewed in favor of vaccine mandates.

I may not agree with Eric on the reasons, but I am sure that he concurs with most of them. 

1. Most of us abominate pointless, avoidable death. We all know that nobody lives to age 125, but we all expect harsh sentences against murder. We also recognize strong criminal sanctions against deeds that can easily result in pointless death especially of those deeds are criminal in themselves, such as DUI, arson, rape, kidnapping, bar-room brawls, and armed robbery as well as any attempted murder. As an example, the criminal code of the State of Michigan prescribes a 25-to-life sentence for armed robbery without the chance of parole for 25 years, which is the same sentence as for attempted murder. Many armed robberies result in murder, so the analogy fits. 

2. We who have gotten the desired inoculations are getting impatient with those who have resisted. The people not inoculated are the ones contracting COVID-19 and spreading it before they get expensive medical treatment in ICU's... and dying. People are literally throwing their lives away for at most a triviality of defying what the rest of us well know. I am old enough to remember a similar story with HIV/AIDS; as with COVID-19 there was much crank falsehood spread about a disease that was then a veritable death sentence. 

With 99% inoculation, we would find COVID-19 unable to sustain itself.

3. COVID-19 is extremely costly. So are cancer, Parkinsonism, Alzheimer's, and congestive heart failure, but none of these is preventable with some simple measure other than perhaps to avoid smoking. There is no vaccine against general cancers or Lewy-body diseases; these are predictable consequences of aging.  Un like these, COVID-19 is highly preventable with some simple inoculations. It's far easier than completing high school, which practically everyone knows is essential to a good life. 

So if something is costly and preventable, why do people not do what they can do to prevent the menace?

4. We can all be judgmental. Sometimes that is without foundation, as with sundry forms of bigotry. This said, we all know behaviors that we cannot excuse, like spouse abuse and child molestation. What most of us recognize as pointless and catastrophic we excoriate. Physicians are particularly prone to contempt for heavy drinkers and heavy smokers. 

5. Many of the anti-vax people are inordinately obnoxious.    Some are dying for practicing what they preach. 

6. Most of us for mass inoculations, masking, and social-distancing act out of at the least pragmatic concerns for our lives and those of loved ones... and pity those who die and the loved ones of those who died of COVID-19. We may fault people for violating simple rules that would have saved their lives. We can hold self-destructive habits in contempt yet feel sorry for those who die. 

Mask mandates, business closings, and a rush to inoculate have saved lives. Maybe mine! I got inoculated at the first time possible, and I got horrible side-effects from the vaccination: chest pains, flu-like symptoms, diarrhea, and overall malaise. In a way I am glad because that indicates that  (1) I had done a good job avoiding COVID-19, (2) it is a good thing that I didn't, and (3) the inoculation works on me as intended. Sure, that is a testimony which is not 100% trustworthy, but I can say to anyone who has not yet gotten vaccinated: 

TAKE THE INOCULATION BEFORE COVID-19 TAKES YOU!

7. Need I tell you that COVID-19 is a budget-buster in the sense that a war is?    

Quote:Oh well, I guess revenues and long term survival no longer matter to the corporations/institutions that are going along with the Democrats and supporting/implementing their vaccine mandates these days.

If the business owner dies, does the revenue matter? Businesses usually die when the owner does.  

Quote: As far as gun controls, the gun controls that already are in place didn't stop the last mass shootings that took place (all done by people who passed their ground checks)  or the shootings and the gun related crimes that are on the rise and taking place in blue cities every day either.

Without question we need to inculcate some values that make violence less thinkable. Criminality is not a political choice; it is instead a fault of character.

[pbrower2a]

(09-15-2021, 01:39 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Pb, you are a white male that we aren't interested in keeping and supporting for the rest of your life.

I can imagine you deciding that I am obsolete. I can imagine you deeming that I am a pathetic insect or other form of expendable life because I don't fit the pattern that you see appropriate for me because I am a white male. Some would see me in the role that Burgess Meredith plays in this episode of The Twilight Zone. I hope that you are in no position to take the role that Fritz Weaver plays as the vituperative, intolerant judge. 



 

Get this straight: "whiteness" is not the cornerstone of my identity. There is no such commodity as "white culture". Plenty of traditions not mine are as valid as whatever I have.  Would I sell out my "whiteness" if such made me more successful in life or undid my Asperger's syndrome? Of course. Would I sell out white racists to a non-white enemy? Of course.

Quote:I mean, what good is a left wing partisan hack like yourself these days?  You don't seem to realize that the party you support and believe will continue supporting through thick and thin is no longer the dominant white working class party that is was when you were a kid/teenager. It's mainly a racially driven anti-white party and a conglomeration of special interests/interest groups associated with government funding and interests controlling lawmakers and bureaucrats today. The Democratic party is basically a big shit sandwich that America has no interest in supporting or getting involved with today.

My political ideology is based more on my conception of Right and Wrong than on any personal advantages. Today the Democratic Party seems the party of rational thought, inter-ethnic and interfaith acceptance. I am not convinced of the superiority of any class, and that class identity is either a tool of oppression or division. 

The Democratic Party isn't anti-white, although it does nothing to elevate "white identity", as if that were any virtue at all. The Republican Party has won the plurality of the popular vote for President only once since 1988. It is the Party of plutocrats who believe resolutely that those who own the gold must make the rules.   

Quote:Now, I don't see a white caucus on the Democratic side yet.

Is such even necessary? My values might better fit Japanese-Americans in greater L.A. than those of opiate-addled losers and meth-heads in Appalachia and the Ozarks. I value formal education as a solution. I reject personal violence. I prefer sobriety to a drugged or alcoholic haze. Values and aesthetics matter far more than do ethnicity.

Quote:You (the white Democrats) are going to need one but I don't see one yet.

Why is there no "white caucus" in the  Democratic? Probably for the same reason that nobody is going to be oppressed for any ethnicity in the Democratic party. In case you are still convinced that there is a dangerous "Black Power" movement, then such is not a part of mainstream life among black people.   

Quote:I see a lot of minority factions who are joining forces now but I don't see a white faction to represent/protect the interests related to you guys and the gals too.

Anyone fixated on "white identity" has a focus on something utterly empty. White populations themselves are rifted in culture related to ethnicity. Do you expect Norwegians and Greeks to have much in common except for being "white"? Or Finns and Portuguese? In the UK, many blacks of Caribbean or recent African origin identify as British because that is how they were raised. Their dark skins mean less to them than does the educational system in which they were raised.

Then again, Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans may look much like each other, but it's impolite to assume that they have the same culture and identity.  

Irrespective of ethnicity, all ethnic groups would live in a better America if we had a more rigorous system of education... and parents made sure that their kids did their homework before turning on the Idiot Screen and playing mindless video games.    

Quote:America is going to see a race war on the Democratic side. Who is going to win it? I doubt the shrinking population of whites are going to win it. Will America intervene or will America  remain idle for the most part and allow the racist Democratic factions to slug it out and kill each other off. Keep in mind, Acirema will no longer be associated with America and America will no longer be obligated to support it or protect it.

Should there be any "race war" in America it will be started by people on the fringe of society, people whom people of all ethnic origins and religions will insist be put away or blown away... and that is what will happen. Dylann Roof is on federal Death Row for his "race war".

[Eric the Green]

(09-14-2021, 05:30 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(09-13-2021, 10:39 AM)David Horn Wrote: Just so you know: there is plenty of wealth on both sides (all sides, assuming you split the GOP into Trumpers and Never Trumpers).  The point is simple: in a democracy it's people not money that's supposed to rule.  That hasn't been true for a long time.  Pick a topic.  A large majority (roughly 70%) favors vaccine mandates, but the minority is still blocking them -- even imposing anti-vacccine and anti-masking mandates.  On guns, roughly 60% wants actual gun controls, and over 80% want mandatory background checks.  On taxes, almost everyone wants higher taxes on the wealthy ... except the wealthy, of course.  I could go on, but you get the point.  Rule by the minority can't go on forever, but the monied interests have found these minority tubthumpers will back their desire to avoid taxes and regulation if they get to avoid vaccines, not wear masks and get to have as many guns as they wish, unimpeaded.

According to Eric, there isn't enough wealth to go around/trickling down on the Democratic side. Eric has been saying/telling me that about the Democratic side for many years. So, why does the 70% favor vaccine mandates when they're already vaccinated themselves and the vast majority of those who get infected aren't severely impacted and don't end up in the hospital or end up dying from it? I think the poll you referring to seems pretty skewed in favor of vaccine mandates. Oh well, I guess revenues and long term survival no longer matter to the corporations/institutions that are going along with the Democrats and supporting/implementing their vaccine mandates these days. As far as gun controls, the gun controls that already are in place didn't stop the last mass shootings that took place (all done by people who passed their ground checks)  or the shootings and the gun related crimes that are on the rise and taking place in blue cities every day either.

David is correct: "Rule by the minority can't go on forever, but the monied interests have found these minority (trump)-tubthumpers will back their desire(s)...."

The Republican states are poorer than Democratic states, because they put trickle-downers/neo-liberals/classical liberals like you into office. Trickle-down economics does not create a prosperous economy, so that's why Republican states are poorer. It is Republicans who suffer from their own policies, which they vote for out of sheer, willful ignorance and prejudice.

Vaccines don't prevent every vaccinated person from getting infected. They strongly reduce but don't eliminate covid sickness. The vaccines may weaken in effectiveness after 6-8 months, especially in those with weak immune systems. I have wondered too if it's OK for the vaccinated just to let the unvaccinated die off; more voters for our side. But the blue side ultimately cares about anyone getting sick, as well as increased vulnerabilty among those vaccinated, also among children who can't get vaccinated yet. The Delta variant is much more infectious, and no-one is sure how many vaccinated people can get sick in the coming months from it. I hope boosters are available soon. But the more unvaccinated people there are, in the world's hotspot (the USA) as well as in other poorly-governed and poor countries, the greater the chance that covid will just continue indefinitely.

Meanwhile, vaccine mandates will assure that we don't have to close the economy again, and make most people feel safer to patronize businesses that mandate vaccines.

I know people on your side want simple, short-term answers. But sometimes life gets complicated. Only Democrats seem to be able to grasp complicated situations, and they blame Democrats if they themselves can't understand them.

The same effect of Republican policies applies to gun violence. I have posted here for years how states with lenient gun laws have more violent crime and gun violence. That may seem counter-intuitive, since blue states include a lot of cities with black and other more-poor populations that tend to have more crime. But overall, it is Republican cities like Tulsa and Oklahoma city that have higher crime and gun violence rates. The gun laws "that are already in place" are woefully inadequate, and so no wonder they don't stop mass shootings. OF COURSE they don't. The USA has by far the most guns, the least gun laws, and the most gun crime of any nation. We are ammosexuals. 

We are the developed nation that is the outlier for having the worst health and social conditions in the world. Trickle-down economics since Reagan has failed, and failed miserably. It has made the USA the most un-equal, the most poor, the most violent, the most unhealthy, the most mentally-disturbed developed country in the world-- by far. That is YOUR "America".

[Bob Butler 54]

I haven’t been pitching in as much here lately.  From my perspective the Republican Party has considerable commitment to racism and the elite.  During the unraveling, they had a considerable advantage in seeking elite profit, tax cuts for the rich, sending jobs abroad where you don’t lose profits to high wages, benefits and environmental concerns, and attacking labor, benefits and wages in the US.  As small government and cutting domestic spending was seen as hurting minorities rather than the working poor, the racists were pleased.  As so many problems like infrastructure and the environment were more encountered and obvious in urban areas, the idea that small government didn’t have to solve problems less encountered in rural areas.  This came to hurt when Covid became one of the problems.

Now these aren’t Classic’s problems.  He is not an elite.  He is not a raving racist.  He just is tied by habit to the Republicans and extrapolates his own views onto an imaginary Acirema.  These views are not what I see as the primary Republican / Red threat.  The problem is elites using money to influence government and racism gathering more votes that LBJ gained by pandering towards the blacks.  The elite money and racist votes dominated the unravelling.  With the twin Covid and Floyd triggers, these factors could be reversed in the ongoing crisis.

But Classic has an idea that the Republicans are for the working man.  I don’t think so.  Oh, they tried to make it so for a while.  For a time when the ‘Tea Party’ was towards its peak, there was an attempt at the Republican’s main stream divorcing itself from the elite influence.  From my view, this died with Trump.  He brought the elite and racist elements back together.

But at any rate, arguing with Classic doesn’t seem to be much worth it.  Attention should stay focused on the real problems, the influence of money on government, and systematic racism.