The Partisan Divide on Issues

[pbrower2a]

(01-22-2020, 11:06 PM)Bob Butler 54 (in blue) Wrote:

(01-22-2020, 02:06 PM)Classic-Xer (in green) Wrote: As I recall, we weren't fighting over the cause during the war. We were fighting over what was going on with our troops during the war and what was true and false related to them and  their conduct. I was fighting with you about lying to me about the conduct and motives of American sons and daughter, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers who were over there that you didn't know at the time. Yes, I treated you the same as any other liberal scumbag who was into doing it at the time. You were a big boy who making his own decisions and expressing his beliefs and views of our troops  at the time right. Now, you can lie to your own and lie to yourself but lying to me could be self damaging and even self damning at times. I've already proved this.

What I remember from the old days…

Back on September 12, 2001, Bush 43 put out his plan.  He was going to respond militarily.  He was not going to look at the underlying causes for the conflict, the reasons why the incident took place.  Just hearing that much, I predicted on the T4T site of the time that he was going to fail.   I hadn’t figured out the strategy yet.  It was too soon.  He likely did not have a firm strategy yet.  But I predicted he was going to fail.

Months later, the Pentagon had a theory.  You need a certain ratio to succeed in an insurgent war of occupation, a sort of necessity for changing a culture by force.  Bush 43 thought his culture obviously superior, and denied the ratio of troops.  He also remembered his father’s failure, and was trying not to raise taxes, and thus he was fighting a limited war with limited forces.  Thus, he denied the pentagon call for more troops.

Two incidents come to mind.  In one, a sniper fired at American troops from a village.  The Americans called in artillery fire on the village.  Another time a wedding was being held.  The locals celebrated by firing their weapons in the air.  The Americans again responded with artillery fire.

Much later, the Americans switched strategy.  As in Vietnam, they had been counting victory by the body count.  The switched to winning hearts and minds.  They segregated Sunni and Shite, defended both, and the bad guys became those who left their enclaves to attack their opposites.  It seemed a worthy switch in tactics.  It was too late, and they hadn’t enough boots on the ground, and they had made enemies using artillery on too many people.

On September 11, 2001 my first thought was of the Pearl Harbor attack. I figured that I (fourteen years and one week away from being born at the time of the Pearl Harbor Attack) was just as disgusted as people who had any awareness of the Pearl Harbor attack at the time. I expected those people still around who had memories of the Pearl Harbor attack (there were obviously still millions) to be similarly disgusted. They were.  But one of those affronts to America happened in a Crisis Era and one did not -- as shown by the reality that there were many people who Remember(ed) Pearl Harbor in 2001.  An event that would shake America into the behavior that one expects in a Crisis is unlikely to precipitate similar behavior when people who still remember the last Crisis are still around. Those who Remember(ed) Pearl Harbor may have had the confidence to believe that Americans would respond in much the same way as they did in 1941, mobilizing the populace, cutting back on personal indulgence, and regimenting the economy.

FDR did not tell Americans to go shopping and do travel for its own sake. Dubya did. People making astronomical amounts of money as film, pop music, and sports stars did not swarm before cameras to enlist as soldiers and sailors. The only prominent person to do so was the unfortunate Pat Tillman. There was no equivalent of Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, or Hank Greenberg putting their careers on hold as baseball sluggers to become soldiers. No equivalent of Jimmy Stewart, then arguably the greatest male film star risking it all to wage war against the Axis (while sending a tenth of his $21-a-month military pay to his agent). There was no Glenn Miller Orchestra heading off to the military theater. Americans went shopping and took Sunday drives as they always did. Above all, the President supported as his "Opportunity Economy" a speculative boom in real estate whose implosion would itself create the economic cause of the current Crisis, much in contrast to the cessation of luxury construction promptly after the Pearl Harbor attack.    

Quote:There is, I suppose, a difference between criticizing a theory, and demonizing the leader who does not believe in the correct theory.  I am a theorizer.  You (Classic X'er) are a demonizer.  I suppose if you are a people person, not a theorizer, it is possible to mistake criticism of the theory for demonizing of the person.  But I am a theorizer.  I’m into facts, reason, objective truth.

I do not so much blame the troops as the leaders for using bad theories, bad tactics.  That is just the way I approach things.  It takes all types.  I just happen to be a INTP.  This may be why my posts include a theory on why I hold my opinion, why your posts feature demonization of individuals.  Your posts are pretty much fact, reason and truth free.  Imagination and lies are sufficient to demonize.  If you demonize enough, make the other guy look thoroughly bad, it would seem from a people person’s perspective you might have done your job.

Some times, your rationality is far stronger than mine. I may have more political passion. I hope that I save my demonization for thoroughly-bad varmints, examples of which History offers plenty of examples. I also recognize that incompetence can be just as devastating as malign intent. Ideally a society puts people into fit roles for their abilities and does not push people into roles for which they are unsuited just because they are wondrously adept at bureaucratic pandering or political demagoguery and incompetent at all else. 

Gilbert and Sullivan had this as satire of someone whose preparation would have been inadequate for the Royal Navy in 1914 or 1939 -- but H.M.S. Pinafore comes from a relatively peaceful time between European powers. 





Kissing up to the bosses, polishing the brass fittings, and "shining those shoes so carefully" are poor preparation for being the leader of the Queen's Navy.    

Quote:I am more into perspective that if you are running on a bad theory, you are going to fail spectacularly. 


Thus we remember the long ago time different.  I still hold by the theories of the time.  The big mistake was I believed Vietnam had proven ‘cut and run’ was a better approach that ‘stay the course’.  Bush 43’s war seemed to show ‘stay the course’ could work if you used the correct tactics from the beginning and were willing to pay the costs in gold, iron and blood.  It seemed that the USA was not so willing.  We have been very reluctant to commit boots on the ground since.

If you are going to have a war, then do it right, or else prepare to cut losses and leave. FDR had an open-ended idea of how much defeating the Axis powers could cost, much as Lincoln had an open-ended idea of how much the Civil War would cost. With such preparation one has a chance of winning in an apocalypse Lincoln and FDR are two of the three most admired of Presidents despite costly wars in either men or in material cost. 

Lyndon Johnson failed in the Vietnam War because he was unwilling to commit to an adequate number of casualties -- perhaps because America was clearly not in the mood for such. He left the unpleasant task of cutting and running to Richard Nixon. Dubya bungled the Second Gulf War due to his reliance upon  people more likely to suck up to him than to tell the unvarnished truth. Rather than adapt (and both Lincoln and FDR changed their overall strategies as needed), Bush simply committed to more of the same even if such were ineffective -- and he left the unpleasant task of cutting and running to Obama.     

Quote:(you) to Classic X'er --
This may be in part a difference between Agricultural Age autocratic thinking and Industrial Age scientific.  From my perspective, it is necessary to get the theory right.  From your perspective, you stick to your beliefs, dogma, tribe and demonization.  Thus, we are to a great degree talking past one another.  Your imaginative creativity just wings around without meaning a lot.

For the definitive city-slicker, Donald Trump has been highly adept at appealing to people whose minds are still in the Agricultural Age. Note well; Donald Trump also appeals effectively to people who cannot imagine that the world can continue running as if the Age of Industrial Scarcity is still here. In the Age of Industrial Scarcity people can still do well economically by meeting needs of basic goods and making others' lives better with more stuff. Most of us have more of a problem of surfeit than of sufficiency with 'stuff'. Should we experience hard times we can simply put off buying the latest gadgets and being little the worse for wear for lacking them. (We still need fuel, food, housing space, and medical care, but most of us can do perfectly well without the latest 'generation' of television, computer, or smart phone. But after the Age of Industrial Scarcity, more profits come from monopolization, ruin of competition, annihilation of opportunity in places 'left behind' (Baltimore, Hartford, Rochester, Camden, Gary, Detroit, Cleveland, Memphis, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Fresno) to compel people to move to high-rent places just to have a chance to work. People have been earning bigger profits of a world becoming nastier, and less for making the world more innovative and creative -- let alone more effective in serving people. 

Donald Trump is above all else a landlord, and his idea of prosperity is that people pay more rent. Ask a tenant whether paying more in real terms for effectively the same studio apartment is prosperity, and you might be lucky to avoid profanity. Property rents have soared in those few parts of America seeming to do well. He is not alone. He is perhaps the final expression of neoliberal economics, the idea that the measure of economic success is that the Right People get what they want no matter what the cost is to others. 

I have yet to figure what those Right People are except to know who is doing well while making life miserable for far more of us. When those Right People express their bloated claims of superiority to which we must all defer I feel visceral offense. I understand that state troopers dread the tongue-lashings that they get when they pull over an expensive car whose driver does extreme speed, the driver then giving a lecture on how his taxes pay the trooper's salary... much in contrast to some migrant farm laborer in the same state. OK, the migrant farm worker may be scared that the trooper will report him to "la Migra (INS)"... (I am not in law enforcement, but I would make clear that I would not report an illegal alien that I stopped for a traffic offense to La Migra unless the car were stolen or the driver were intoxicated or on or in possession of drugs; I would tell the rich person that the difference between someone hitting a tree at 100 mph in a late-model Mercedes and a decrepit Ford Escort is the expense of the funeral). We may need to return to some fundamentals of capitalist doctrine, among others:

1. In a healthy capitalist society, capitalists are the only people who get rich (with some exceptions for successful professionals, entertainers, and creative people)
2. The highest rewards in capitalism go to those who do best for Humanity through innovation and service -- that is, making life better for people not capitalists
3. Small business needs breaks, as it is pure entrepreneurialism 
4. Easy money merits high taxes and hard-gotten income deserves light taxes
5. Capitalism must work for non-capitalists, as not everyone can be a capitalist -- and many must not be capitalists!
6. Basic human needs get met before egregious excess
7. Decentralization of the economy (so that one can do about as well in Hartford as in Boston or in Fresno as in San Jose) is essential to social justice.
8. Profits off human suffering, especially off monopolization, are unconscionable. 


Neoliberalism is good at turning profits and generating executive compensation, but horrible at creating opportunity -- let alone social justice. As for the end of industrial scarcity... a wholesome capitalist order has more chance of making things to well than does a sick one like what we now have.