The Partisan Divide on Issues

[pbrower2a]

(01-12-2020, 08:24 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(01-12-2020, 03:57 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: (deleted for brevity)

Some conservatives are bigots.  Not all of them, but the Southern Strategy was and remains real.  When LBJ went after the minority vote, it was to be expected that the other party would do the obvious.  It lingers.

Most conservatives recognize that ethnic and religious bigotry might be a good campaign pitch, but that it is futile policy. Enforcement of bigoted ideas as public policy interferes with the freedom of businesses to conduct business as seems to fit the desires of owners and managers. Business is more intent on suppressing the rights of workers and any competition.   

Quote:Absurdly few conservatives are fascist.  Oh, a few who enjoy confrontation will wear the swastika and use the old salutes.  I am not saying they are into 20th century fascism and the original meaning of the word.  No one is building gas chambers or serious about bringing back openly lynching people.  I am not saying the ‘all conservatives are fascist’ is any more true than ‘all democrats are socialists.’  That is demonizing, in either direction.  I will call out folk who do either, including you.

That takes a destructive sadist or a fanatic... like Hitler. Hitler would have been wise to leave the Jews alone, but he so believed that he was doing a favor to the German people that it was worth the disruption to the economy. Conservatives are as hostile to fascists as liberals and social democrats are to Commies. Conservatives at their best recognize that contradictory promises invariably lead to catastrophic failures of policy.   

 

Quote:Some evangelicals organize into political action.  This is one part of the conservative scene.  They attempt to enforce their religious values on those that don't share them.  Denying this is kinda futile, an effective lie.  I too will call them like I see it.

Here is a generational angle: the older evangelicals church-shopped and found churches that fit their political and economic values while offering the authority of religion even to the point of Biblical literalism -- even young-earth creationism, Noah taking a forty-day cruise around a completely-flooded world, and ridiculously-long lifespans for patriarchs up to Abraham. Abraham does live to 120, which is just less than the longest reliably-recorded lifespan of anyone living in the 19th and 20th century (nobody has yet attained that age living in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, and never will)... and as the first to have a covenant with God and teach any morality... well, I find it impossible to believe anything in the Bible that precedes Abraham. 40-day circumnavigation of the globe? That is about the length of time that Columbus used in getting across the Atlantic Ocean in 1492 or the Mayflower took in crossing the Atlantic in 1620.   

Their kids? They were dragged into an evangelical church on Sunday morning, like it or not...and they are told to read the Bible.  Some parts are more interesting than others. The Jesus that their parents know is not the Jesus that the kids discover. The kids see sociopathic or narcissistic hucksters and see characters just like the Temple priests that Jesus recognized as hypocritical frauds.  I discussed this on a long-vanished Forum (the new York Times had one for discussing all sorts of issues) -- that if I were Jesus returning to the world as Jesus and first appearing in America I would go onto the plush stage set of some televangelist with a chainsaw and cut his Louis-quatorze chairs to pieces and warn the television audience that that televangelist had turned my message into a fraudulent sales pitch and his church into a "den of thieves". Kids can see through hypocrisy very well.      

Quote:It is no more American to believe that America was great in the 1950s and 1960s, during the New Deal through Great Society progressive peak, than it is American to throw oneself into the Nixon through Trump conservative era.  It is not un-American to tax the rich or believe in equality.  To use the word ‘American’ as if it only applied to conservatives is a lie.  Many liberals were born in and live in America and believe in values which are deeply rooted in the USA.

I do not miss the Blood Alley roads that superhighways have supplanted; I do not miss polio; I do not miss Jim Crow practice; I do not miss the Red Scare and nuclear fear; I do not miss homophobia. If you wonder whether the technological achievements of our time are not so much something that I would miss, it is because the technologies of entertainment allow us to do much the same things that we used to (e-mail is a good substitute for a telegram, and recorded video is a good substitute for movie-going) -- perhaps less expensively. The quality of entertainment is far more important than the medium.

Quote:Most liberals are not socialists.  The conservatives use the word when they wish to demonize.  When you have bigots and socialists debating one another, calling each other names, you are not having a serious conversation where both sides are listening to one another.  You are having a name calling contest, with both sides exchanging school yard level insults.

Even with "socialists" one has a great variety from social democrats (who have a good reputation for human rights and civil liberties) to the Khmer Rouge. But with that caveat, name-calling is pointless unless the name has some validity. I use a word like "thief", "rapist", "arsonist", "murderer", "traitor", or "pedophile" with great care.  If I call President Trump a "useful idiot" it is with regret that the label fits. 

Quote:Ever since Nixon was forced out of power, the Republicans have daydreamed about doing the same to a Democrat.  They have not come close.  If you do not believe in big government, you are free to step outside of rule of law so long as you don’t get caught.  A bunch of conservative administrations have got caught.  Watergate.  Iran Contra.  Lying about causes of war.  Violating campaign finance laws.  Refusing to recognize oversight.  Promising to disregard oaths.  There is only lying about their sex life going the other way.  Not the same.

We do not get to decide what laws we obey and which laws we disobey unless the laws are so odious that they merit disobedience. I think of the Fugitive Slave Law or the Nuremberg Laws as extreme examples. Bad systems such as the old Soviet Union can develop a law so horrible as Article 58 of the Soviet Criminal Code that defines practically everyone as a criminal. I might report a drunk driver to the local police, but I am not going to tell some secret police official tell which way a political dissident went. 

Quote:To escape the problematic Democratic habit of obeying the law, many conservatives have stepped into a world of alternate facts.  In short, they lie and don’t care that they are lying.  Their daydreams of locking her up have no basis in reality.  The official investigations have once again cleared Hillary, but will this slow down the chants?  Will it free the members and allies of the conservative administration being investigated, plea bargaining and in some cases being actually locked up?  This is problematic.  It is Republican administrations who indulge in a very small minority of those who act outside the law.

Such people still think that Obama was born in Kenya even if such would have never made a difference (his mother's womb made him an American by birth, according to law. Law does not exist for our convenience. 

Quote:Now as long as you use prejudicial language like ‘American’ and ‘Socialist’ I will tell it like I see it.  You are spouting propaganda which is just not true.  You are deliberately poisoning attempts at real conversation.  More than a few who are die hard into the liberal way of looking at things are doing the same.

That is what I mean by demonizing.

Classic X'er fails to recognizes that there are many ways in which to be an American. As an example, America has Latino communities that existed long before the American Revolution. Those are as American as some WASP community settled by the Puritans that subsequent waves of immigrants somehow missed. Never mind that those communities have expanded due to natural growth and immigration. Many communities in New England have at most small contingents of "early New England" stock now have populations of  Irish, French-Canadian, Portuguese, or Italian stock. So "Rodrigues" became "Rogers", "Pereira" became "Perry"; "Racine" got translated into "Root", or "Jankowiak" became "Johnson". So what?

We are culturally richer because of our immigrants. How do you know that any one of the kids at a birthday party at which a pinata appears is Hispanic? Need one be Italian to appreciate pizza or Puccini?