Bipartisan Senate group proposes ‘no fly, no buy’ gun measure

[Eric the Green]

(10-25-2018, 11:52 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(10-22-2018, 11:55 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: Opposition to Kavanaugh was not "extremism." If the American people think that it is, then this so-called "exhausted majority" is a right-wing majority.

Kavanaugh was shoved onto the people in order to take away our rights and suppress the vote. The advent of the Kavanaugh kangeroo court is the decisive end of our democracy. Now the courts cannot stop districting that is intended to gerrymander away the votes of Democrats, or voter purges that are unfair to them. What's happening in Georgia and North Dakota now can continue with impunity. The National Park Service has been asked to stop any protests outside the white house, so this is the beginning of Trump's promise to have demonstrators carried out on stretchers like in the good old days.

Those who supported Kavanaugh were wrong, and those who opposed him were right. We do not have a conflict between extremists here. There are virtually no left wing extremists in the United States. What we have is a growing division between center-leftists and an extreme fascist right-wing. It is going to be up to the people to fight this descent into tyranny, which is a worldwide trend now. What is happening in Turkey, Central America, Brazil, China, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East in the wake of the Arab Spring, is happening here too under Trump and the Republicans. The only "left extremism" today is, as Goldwater might have said, in defense of our liberty.

The advent of the Kavanaugh kangeroo court might well mean that voting for Democrats is suppressed, so that those on the center-left have no alternative but civil disobedience or violent resistance. This center-left resistance suits the right-wing authorities just fine, as they can be accused of being "uncivil" as Ted Cruz and the other Republican senators on the committee say, or simply labelled as terrorists and communists, and that way they can get a solid majority of folks in red states to agree with them, and that's all they need to repress them and maybe put them away.

The only regeneracy possible today in the USA is a rising up of the center-left to resist this trend toward the tyranny of the oligarchic right-wing. A regeneracy in a 4T is NEVER a mamby-pamby call for compromise and civility. A 4T means that our country is in danger, and the people must rise up to save it. That's where we are. The regeneracy is happening, but it's not a call for civility per se. It is a call for truth, liberty and justice. How "civil" it is depends on how much it is resisted by tyranny. The more the regeneracy is suppressed by the Republicans, the less "civil" the regeneracy will be.

If we are to have a government of the people, by the people and for the people, then we must now give our last full measure of devotion, and resolve that our efforts shall not be in vain.

So says someone with a closed mind, an extremist.

Extremism might in some ways be defined as leaving only violence open to solve the basic problem.  The Civil War and World War II certainly fit, and generally fit the Industrial Age when there was no other method to solve problems of authoritarian government short of violence.

The Great Depression was viewed by some as the failure of capitalist - democratic government, but was solved though politics with the communist revolution not happening.  The Consciousness Revolution similarly ended mostly with votes.  I am seeing the process in the US as becoming less authoritarian, more democratic, as time goes by.

But success in a process like that depends on both sides listening and both sides acknowledging reality.  In questions like prejudice and global warming, some people want the past more than the future.  In clinging to the past, the extreme options seems to leave no choice but to leave the conservatives as a powerless minority.

I am not seeing the spiral of violence budging beyond the few nuts phase.  We are having a few, maybe one person, sending mail bombs lately in a totally harmless way.  That's about it for blue-red violence lately.  Even Trump - who seems to think non-violence means the fuse didn't work - thinks little of the violent process.  The OKC - September 11th rejection of violence as a way to achieve political ends seems to be a new American core value.  That, and the states weather blue or red are really polka dotted.  There are a few population centers where a collective civilization of mutual support makes sense, surrounded by larger less populated areas where independence, self sufficiency and sometimes prejudice dominate.  There is no simple way of dividing that up.  Both depend on one another.  We have to get together and come up with something tolerable by all.

This being the case, the crisis has to end by a political process, and that means the two sides listening to each other and rejecting simplistic extremist answers.

I think in comparison to people in more-advanced countries, my views would be considered center-left. To have the views that I have, you need to be morally-concerned and informed. If that's extremism, so be it.

The people must rise up, as I said. A 4T means a conflict. So far, it has not been a violent conflict, and I hope it won't be. But if the right-wing extremists who now control our government continue to cut off all means of peaceful opposition, by appointing right-wing hacks like Kavanaugh and suppressing voters and fair elections, then there's no doubt people will feel their only way to oppose them is with violence, or civil disobedience.

I hope that won't be the way, because the left would probably lose any attempt of violent revolution in the USA. Pretty much that would also be true of the right. Only foreign intervention would make a revolution successful in the USA; that's just the nature of our "beast."

Your belief that today's crisis has to end by "the two sides listening to each other," however, is not only a forlorn hope, but historically has never happened. It is a matter of facts, not just extremism, in what I'm saying. Political contests or wars decide what happens, not attempts to compromise and find something tolerable by all. The defeated faction just has to accept the outcome. As MacArthur said, there's no substitute for victory, and Reagan echoed that in his 1976 convention speech. Americans respect politicians who take a stand, and they vote for them. It's not a matter of extremism and rejecting simple answers. It's just historical fact. You claim to be fact-based, but I don't see when any 4T or 2T has been resolved in the USA by two sides listening to each other.

What we can hope for, perhaps, is that enough younger and independent minds are persuaded to support the blue side in elections so that a blue victory is obtained. It's possible, but the blue side needs to vote and get active. The alternatives to a blue victory in elections are:

1) a red victory, in which case our country declines and becomes a banana republic tyranny like Honduras, or 
2) that the country goes into a violent (or non-violent) civil war and splits apart (and I think a split-up country is not as difficult as you say), or perhaps 
3) some combination of a blue victory after some futile red violent rebellions. If I have to predict, this being a 4T, I have always predicted the latter #3 scenario as the most likely. 

Again, there is no 4T yet in history from which we escaped without violence, and also none so far from which we emerged without a progressive victory. And also, this 4T cannot be understood without understanding that started in 2008 and will last until at least 2028, and that the previous internal-conflict centered 4T began in about 1850.

If you are saying that the cycle is over, or never happened, so that we are not in a typical 4T, then that is a challenge for you to argue and demonstrate.