Will History Say, "Was This The Best America Could Come Up With?"

[Bob Butler 54]

(11-10-2016, 12:53 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Maybe the question will be "Why did America choose the worst?"

Want serious answers?  I might start.

The Republican party and supporting media outlets have been selling borrow and spend trickle down for years.  Their base believes in it.  It should not be difficult to imagine people thinking lower tax rates and less of the government telling them what to do are good things.  Blue folks should understand that such policy can seem very attractive, though it caused economic hardships under both Bushes.  It just doesn't work.

Since Nixon’s time, the southern strategy has been an element of Republican policy.  One not to be forgotten talking point is the ‘welfare queen’, the unwed mother who deliberately gets pregnant while staying unmarried so she can max out her welfare check.  This is subtly or not subtly behind the Republican policy favoring lower taxes and minimizing entitlements.  The desire to be independent and self sufficient ought to be understandable.  The desire to keep one’s money, to not see it go to them, is not always totally irrational and biased.

There is the notion that there has been an excess of political correctness.  Before Trump, I could almost believe it.  I could see abrasive militant opponents of racism and sexism searching for insult and abuse so intensely that their presence might become more disruptive than the presence of a bigot.  A lot could be said in favor of civility to both the bigot and the militant.  Since Trump, by many accounts, the bigots are becoming more open and blatant.  Bigotry didn’t die in the awakening.  It was forced to be somewhat more subtle.  Of late it is coming into the open again, enabled and encouraged by Trump and company.  A lot of deplorables out there welcome this and will vote for hate coming into the open again.  This is a trend that should not continue.

Both parties, supported by Citizen’s United, have allowed themselves to be bought and paid for by the capitalist elites.  In this election cycle, the Republican base clearly rejected the establishment politicians running for the Republican nomination, and the American People rejected the Clinton heritage as well.  The American political structure has been and remains corrupt, and an awful lot of red tainted people are entirely ready to reject the establishment of both parties.  I’m tempted to say that not enough blue tainted people are ready to reject the Democratic establishment.  The Democrats would have been better off going with Bernie.  For some time I have proposed that voters should get in the habit of rejecting any candidate who is beholden to corporate interests or even allows the impression of being beholden to corporate interests.  This is starting to happen.

Then there are the echo chamber bubbles.  The Republican Party has been handing out daily talking points to their media allies regularly.  If I described this sort of journalism as being more propaganda than news, a lot of folks wouldn’t argue.  Republicans living inside red echo chambers will talk of the liberal main stream media with a similar contempt for corporate and liberal agendas and lies.  The two groups of people cannot communicate or cooperate with one another as they do not perceive the same reality.  If one lives in certain parts of the country, if one limits one’s information sources to party organs, all Trumps lies will be accepted as unquestionably true.  I try to be dubious about both echo chambers.  No matter which reality one is living in, one ought to be prepared to assume that one's own echo chamber is being viewed as twisted contorted lies to the same extent as the opposition's echo chamber seems to you.

These are basic problems.  I suspect others will want to state more problems.  Please do.  It isn’t hard to propose easier said than done solutions.  Actually changing stuff, coming up with actionable ideas, will be harder.