10-16-2018, 10:53 AM
(10-15-2018, 07:52 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(10-14-2018, 10:54 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:I see that you're able to use people, switch characters, perform roles and use their world views as much as you are able to use ideals and values associated with other people too. You do realize that all men are created equal was written by a slave owner who's wife wasn't viewed as an equal either.(10-14-2018, 08:22 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Hmmm...This may have something to do with the reason why Reds don't take Blues very seriously, why they don't want the Blues to ever be the ones in power and why Reds don't view Blues as genuine people who actually care about other people as much as they seem and often claim to care about the people BELOW them. Well, I'm a reddish who isn't that much below you or all that much above you at this point in our lives. This could also be the reason the two if us are rarely on the same page, rarely understanding where each other's at and misunderstandings relating to differences with values and worldviews.
Few, even among those who lean blue, will explore world views as gleefully as I do.
But what you see often from reds is just tribal thinking. Red leaners just do not emphasize as much with people who are not like them, are not of the same tribe. People who think a certain way, people they call Americans, sure. All men are created equal? Care as much about one guy as the next? That is a more blue ideal. Reds just do not follow.
I will gladly look at what other countries do well that we do not well to determine whether what they do well applies to this country. We ignore traditions at the risk of destroying the foundations of the reality that we know. Revolutionary or even incremental change must prove itself in theory (such as logical consistency) and applicability. For example, if we are to lose all freedom, including consumer choice, and all security from governmental despotism, in return for rapid development (the essence of Stalinism), then we must ask whether rapid material development is worth the price. Gulags and show trials? I'd rather be a peasant in Bengal than a zek in a Gulag.
As for Thomas Jefferson and his hypocrisy -- even the idea that all white people are created equal was a revolutionary idea in 1776. Slavery was fully entrenched in American economic life, and extirpating it would require revolutionary changes in their own right. But let us remember that when Jefferson had Sally Hemings as a quasi-wife, the laws of Virginia prohibited their marriage. Sally Hemings was a half-sister of his late wife... and she was 3/4 white. More importantly, she was very intelligent, as was Jefferson. Jefferson would have had a hard time finding some woman who would not have bored him to no end. Living on the frontier, and Charlottesville was the frontier around 1800 would have been difficult for any woman. Many women moved to the frontier with their husbands and started family life on the frontier, but most of their husbands were not Thomas Jefferson.
Jefferson was not a violent man, and their is no record of him sleeping with basically anything that moved while at Monticello. This is not a matter of exploitation, of sowing wild oats, as was common among white men in the South (they would practice sexuality upon black women who had no real choice, which is basically rape by modern standards). Jefferson was with Sally Hemings for a very long time, and she had six children with him. That suggests some permanence in a relationship. Jefferson had other slaves and did not treat them the same way as his by Sally Hemings. He freed his children by Sally Hemings as they reached adulthood,and by all accounts they did well. People 7/8 white and 1/8 black can often "pass" as white.
Yes, slavery by people who assert that all men are created equal is hypocrisy. This said, I have come to recognize in my 62 years that hypocrisy is far more normal than its absence. Most people fail to live up to their ideals for causes ranging from the unattainability of those ideals, their incapacity to meet their ideals, social or economic pressures (let us say an 'environmentalist' who works in the oil industry because he is a petroleum engineer), or the contradictions within his beliefs. The people who have high ideals and live up to them are saints, and we have few of those. People bad and proud of it are not at all hypocritical. To give an idea of what a bad non-hypocrite is, consider the serial killer Alton Coleman (executed by the State of Ohio). We rightly hope that our successors will transcend our shortcomings; such is one measure of progress. It is only after white people could decide that all white people are created equal that they could contemplate whether non-white people are created equal. It also took freedom of expression and elected governments to determine at the earliest that slavery was an abomination.
...Now back to contemporary life. The American economy increasingly looks like a stereotype of capitalism out of Marxist screeds, except for having a Soviet-style elite running things. This country increasingly looks like an aristocratic plutocracy in which heirs and bureaucratic elites are becoming a self-selecting, exclusive elite that believes that it can do horrible things to people and believe such right. It is not simply ownership through inheritance; the executive elite in America is becoming almost aristocratic in self-selection. In times that I remember, business executives (when they were GIs) were typically in their 50s and 60s and had loyalties down the line. They had started with the firm, typically upon graduation from high school, doing ordinary labor. With effort and dedication they proved themselves able to do something other than raw labor and increasingly-skilled work, found their way into management or traveling sales, and steadily showed competence and dedication. They were paid badly by standards of today's executives, but by the time they got to an executive role they were too old to buy a mansion or a sports car. Today's executives are now paid lavishly to treat workers badly. That's how the Soviet nomenklatura operated at the end, and advancement into the nomenklatura depended upon having connections. Right. Mommy and Daddy. We have a quasi-aristocratic elite owning things and a quasi-aristocratic elite managing things, and everyone else gets whatever those elites determines is suited to their appointed roles. For most people that is working poverty. Let us remember that exploitative elites try to shape the political system to their advantage. I may change my tune in November, but so far, the corporate lobbyists, retainers of the heirs and executives, are the real power in both Houses of Congress and most state legislatures. Although the politicians run as nice guys who would be your neighbor, the real campaign often comes from front groups of one Party; those front groups try to discourage anyone from challenging the power of the economic elites.
We have the formality of elections, but the exercise of political power follows dictum of the late oil billionaire H. L. Hunt: "He who has the gold makes the rules". That, I regret to say, describes how American politics work. Add to that, Donald Trump is everything wrong with American politics -- a demagogue who pitted working-class white people against a diverse middle class on behalf of a quasi-aristocratic elite, who punishes people who disagree with him with malicious policies, and who insults people who ever voted for him the first time. For affecting military shtick, having been a draft-dodger makes him an extreme and pointless hypocrite. He mocks people with handicaps, which is behavior that I thought abominable when I was in single digits in years. He shows despotic or dictatorial tendencies (take your pick of the description) and gets cozy with dictators while weakening our relationship with democracies that I would rather trust. To be sure, we all occasionally say things that we might regret; think of Barack Obama making this statement on April 14, 2008:
"They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
of working-class people in towns that had lost their well-paying industrial jobs
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/a...ctions2008
Barack Obama wisely backed down from that. When Donald Trump says something even more offensive, far from backing down, he faults people for not accepting what he says at face value. I know from history what sort of leaders fault opponents for failure to believe what the Great and Infallible Leader says.
Il Duce ha sempre raggione. (Mussolini) is always right.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.