10-19-2018, 06:51 PM
(10-19-2018, 04:35 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(10-19-2018, 03:19 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:(10-18-2018, 06:17 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: What do either of them TRULY know about Republican voters other than what upsets them or scares them doesn't seem to upset or matter as much if at all to us? What are either of them experts on any way? Yes, the national debt has been going up since at least the 1980's. Yes, our financial obligations have been going since at least the 1980's as well. That's old news.
They do not need to know how Republican voters think; they need only know what Republican policies and their consequences are.
But I would go back to my comments a while ago about blue humor. In a purely rational self interested world, one would need only underline the consequences. With values, if attacked you attack back. You resist by closing your mind and voting red. I am not sure the onset of the main stream media and late night TV is productive.
At some point, harsh reality establishes the consequences. I can only imagine what it was like for people in the defeated Confederacy to see what used to be their slaves milling about and, as one gives them orders to toil for one, the former slaves say something to the effect that "Mister Lincoln emancipated us!" Or perhaps in Japan at the end of WWII, one sees some of the soldiers and sailors optimistic about conquering their way into a better world for Japan that they are back for the rice harvest as food stocks are getting low. Or in Germany one finds at the end of the war that the Allies are giving you a guided tour of Dachau.
Rationality is most obvious when the reality is harsh and unforgiving. Maybe if the Red side fully entrenches power we will recognize the harsh reality that the sole reason for our existence is to make people already filthy rich even filthier rich and that survival, no matter how bleak is a privilege. Raw reality is often unspeakably ugly and dehumanizing. My happiness depends upon the appreciation of some complexity.
Quote:This is why I would emphasize the best of red values, listen, and try to encourage others to listen in return.
Is it working? It does not seem to be. There seems to be a Right to Shoot Oneself in the Foot.
So what are the Red virtues? I can recognize old conservative virtues: trust in what is proved to work, including modesty, humility, reason, thrift, order, faith, integrity, hierarchy, formality, sobriety, work, and markets. There is no reason in a MAGA hat. I hear Trump and I hear rhetoric mocked in Why We Fight: Don't think, just obey your Leader!
I'm sorry: it may be new to America but it has been tried elsewhere at other times, and it has never worked well. It has brought injustice, cruelty, destruction, and shame.
Was there an unqualified better time in America than America on the eve of the Trump victory? Maybe life was easier because real estate costs and taxes were not so high (high taxes reflecting the ever-rising cost of government), or that there were opportunities that no longer exist (as if anyone could be Henry Ford or Roy Kroc). This said, I would not want to be black where or when Jim Crow was a reality. It is not so long ago that homosexuality was a crime. 40-hour workweeks and 70-year lifespans for industrial workers seem far better than seventy-hour workweeks and 40-year lifespans, especially when the last few years of the 40-year lifespan required that children leave school to help support their worn-out parents. Sure, with a modest income one could buy a cottage by the lake -- but that is over.
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.