12-15-2016, 01:05 PM
(12-15-2016, 12:16 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:(12-15-2016, 07:58 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(12-15-2016, 04:40 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: That is the big lie. Socialism is not our problem; capitalism is our problem. Always has been.
I'd say the problem is elite classes gathering too much power, unchecked by the working classes. This problem manifests under either capitalism or socialism. The communists took it to quite an extreme, but the capitalists are working on it.
The capitalist extreme is fascism, where the free market is displaced by government sanctioned oligopoly. That has been tried too.
The crisis cannot be resolved from the top down, not intentionally. At least some of the elites must be cut down to size, one way or another. It's not going to happen voluntarily.
I like your statement much better than Eric's.
I figure the politicians that get power will serve the group that can give them the most power. Through the unravelling, the politicians have been serving the elite. Campaign contributions seem to have gotten one into power better than actively serving the people. The most positive thing I can say about the Trump phenomena is that a pretense and promise of shunning the establishment was spoken of. Hillary's association with politics as usual hurt her, as it hurt all those Republican candidates Trump beat. Trump's pretense to be an outsider helped him. Of course, Obama ran on 'change' as well.
The disgust level of the American people is not unknown. The problem is getting real action. Obama was frustrated by Congress. Trump, after promising to drain the swamp, has hired a lot of alligators. While it is early to say that all Trump's populist promises will prove empty, I don't see that the elites are being cut down to size. It seems likely that the anger at the elites hasn't come close to peaking.
Of course, the alternative to a very frustrating very empty democratic process is violence. There is talk enough of this on these forums. I'm not seeing the spirals of violence really moving yet, though.
That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.