10-19-2017, 02:48 PM
(10-18-2017, 02:42 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: I don't rely too much on subsidies, although perhaps a bit more than earlier, since energy subsidies for example have become more available. I have been an independent businessman like you for many years. Your assumptions don't seem too sharp. I doubt you could match my actual education level, and I doubt you have been a school teacher like me. But I don't disrespect those like yourself who are independent businessmen, although I wonder in this age of climate change whether the products you sell are green enough. Oh well, all of us have far to go in that department too. I don't have an electric car or solar panels yet. I hope to get them one of these days.I don't match you as far as your education level. I don't match you as far as having worked as a teacher in the past. However, I'm confident that my level of intelligence more likely exceed your level of intelligence. How much brain does one need to use when the bulk of ones life in spent speaking/dealing with like minded/ indoctrinated/ brain washed people? No much based on what I see here and else where. Don't believe me, read your posts and count the memes. I'm not interested in memes. I'm not interested in ignorant people who use/ see value in the use of ignorant memes.
Independent/individualistic is your value preference, but that does not make your values better. Interdependence and social support and compassion are values too. These days, there are very many wealthy Democrats, because they are well-informed, and because they see where obedience to the slogan ""stealing from productive people under the threat of force to give to the fat, lazy, and ignorant" leads the nation. They may not live in your neighborhood, but in yuppie and uppity neighborhoods in big cities there are plenty of wealthy Democrats who aren't dependent on the social services, which they still vote for because they know it's right to do so. Yes, they probably don't mind paying taxes too; they are rich enough not to care. Still, the most wealthy in America do vote Republican, and do hate and resist taxes. Wealth just is not such a totally reliable indicator anymore of how people vote; exceptions apply to the wealthy=Republican and poor=Democratic paradigm.
The Clintons did not spend their lives primarily serving themselves; that's just the smear propagated by Republicans and has very little basis in fact.
Those who care only about taxes, instead of the prosperity and intelligent behavior of the nation, are the ones who vote Republican and screw up the country big time. To care only about whether the government is forcing you to pay taxes, and to think that only poor, lazy, or dependent people benefit from those tax dollars, is to support the destruction of the social fabric of the nation and allow it to squander its resources on tax breaks and needless wars (including drug wars, walls against immigrants, and other such xenophobic-nationalist nonsense).
I say to you TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Party types: pay your damn taxes and stfu about it. And I hope your tax bills go sky high, and soon!
Compassion is a virtue not a value. You either have it or you don't. I have it but I don't flaunt it or have it tattooed on my forehead. But, I know why you view it as a one. Where would you be without it to use and take advantage of? Where would the liberals be without it to use for themselves? You'd think after many years of posting with you, my opinion of you would be higher. You'd think you would have said something meaningful or contributed something useful that would have raised my opinion of you. Well, nothing has changed. My opinion of you is as low as it has always been. You have admitted to me that you're unable to make any head way beyond the greens/baby blues. Me, I've made a lot of headway. I'm pretty much at your door step. Don't worry, I respect your door step and view your door step as your territory. I respect your right to keep your door shut as well.
Interdependence requires equal balance, equal giving to receiving, equal gains to loses for it to be viewed and considered as viable and acceptable for the long term. Right now, we have some big gaps that exist that we are both aware of, pointing out and dealing with at this time. Gaps that are probably to great for self centered politicians to address and over come at this point. So, where do we end up when the social falling out comes. I assume the flag and the Constitution and the freedoms and the people that it represents are going to stick together during the social falling out. I assume that the State of Minnesota will remain part of the United States of America as well.