The Partisan Divide on Issues

[pbrower2a]

(01-25-2020, 06:58 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(01-25-2020, 09:21 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: But the big thing is the confluence of fighting the government’s attempt to help the poor with racism.  Since the Reagan administration there has been a conservative push against helping the poor, against domestic spending, towards small government, towards cutting taxes.  This has had an element of racism, has through the conservative era.  If you want to hurt minorities, you hurt the poor, which accidentally made America not so great.  Yes, the conservative policies of the conservative era ended America’s greatness, the feeling that America could and should do anything.  The jobs left, and the generations that came of age in the conservative era were introduced to poverty.  This was primarily the result of conservative striving.  How do you look to fight it from the conservative side?  What conservative programs should I support to reverse the trend?

Thus your post becomes an incoherent ramble, a poor attempt at demonization.  I could be all in favor of the liberals borrowing a little common sense from the middle of the country.  I would be pleased to support a working together if the racist, violent and tribal thinking elements could be stripped off.

That is virtually impossible.  What conservative programs or policies could be supported?

Wow, you come at me with an argument loaded with a plethora of pseudo intellectual rambles and rants when it basically boils down to this portion of it that directly matters most to you. I don't know Bob, you tell me how we are supposed fulfill our obligation to people like you with millions of other poor people who have similar needs flowing in from other countries for other reasons and their kids along with other liberals voting to get what you and millions of others here have worked and are legally entitled to receive.

What is your definition of an intellectual? Someone making a living formulating, refining, and sharing ideas as a living? A creative person who, instead of shaping precursor materials into objects of material utility (let us say ladders or gloves) turns words or visions into stimulating ideas? To be sure there are some intellectuals such as Rush Limbaugh who can create thought-ending memes that largely convince people of what they already believe and hack artists who churn out sentimental Kitsch... I read some passages of imaginative thought, I see magnificent art, or I hear magnificent music and I am awed as if I were looking at Half Dome or Big Sur... or "even" Tahquamenon Falls. 

(Hey, Classic X'er -- You might want to see Tahquamenon Falls some time. It's in Michigan's Upper Peninsula,  so it could almost be a day trip. Take in nearby Pictured Rocks Lakeshore, and you have a great weekend of seeing very good Nature. Head north on I-35 to Duluth, take US 2 through northwestern Wisconsin, and  not far into Michigan take Michigan 28 past Marquette... Niagara Falls has a great light show, but Tahquamenon has a spectrum of colors due to tannin from the nearby trees...)

You seem to lack imagination. But stretch your imagination some, and you will come to recognize the emptiness of consumer Kitsch and empty status symbols. You do not need to own a Cezanne to appreciate it; nobody really owns Bruckner's Fifth Symphony anymore; and most of the literary masterpieces are in the public domain.  When it comes to expanding the intellectual basis of life -- if it feels good it really is good, which is more than I can say of booze, drugs, and other ephemeral delights.      

Maybe we need to start treating poverty as something to be relieved instead as a tool of command and control of people not in the elites. Most of the poor in America are white people born and bred here in the Good Old U. S. of A., especially in the parts of America (the Mountain and Deep South) that for some reason attract few immigrants. Maybe we need to relearn how to live well with having to do less to make the iron pails, undergarments, and video of third-rate feature films. We still need such commodities as rice, milk,  undergarments, motor fuel...

The Right had its solution: all must dedicate everything to the enrichment, pampering, and power of extant elites -- ever more every day. First we had an economic bubble and then we had scarcity to manage for monopoly profits. How is life better than it was before 1980? Sure, we have some marvelous technologies which make life more of a gilded cage -- but it is still a cage. We are obliged to work longer and harder under harsher conditions (and working longer means taking a second job to make ends meet) on behalf of people who consider their insatiable greed and lust for sybaritic indulgence in the presence of great misery a sort of benefice. Having learned the tools of the intellectual I can demonstrate how absurd and cruel such is. I can cast moral judgment because I understand the consequences of immoral choices such as cruelty. I have never seen good come from cruelty. Tough love, perhaps? Fine. Delivering someone from addictive behaviors is a genuine liberation. Turning someone into a debt-bonded serf, which is about what the economic elites seek to do to most of us, is simply evil.  

Quote: I don't see it working out myself and I don't see the American right going along with it for much longer Where are the Democrats who think and view things more like me these days. Now, I'm not a Republican but I could be a Tea Party that splits the Democratic party in half and fills the obvious American void that missing in the Democratic party right now that most everyone wants to show up and tilt the scale heavily in favor of America these days. ... I'm physically fit and emotionally fit and quite capable of holding my own and defeating groups of liberals. I'd defeat Nancy (the closest person on the liberal side to becoming President these days) if Pelosi had the guts to face me. Do you think I would respect Nancy's gender and Nancy's position of authority and her title, or do you think I would ignore them all together and take her on one on one, tit for tat, exchange vs exchange, no holds bared if she goes there and it becomes necessary like I would with any other person on the liberal side.

The Tea Party is a big part of the reliable vote for the Reactionary Party. It accepts the intellectual pabulum that the GOP and its spokesmen offer to get people in line with the exploiters and abusers who make life miserable for millions so that the economic elites can live like sultans. If it is a matter of brute force against 'effete' liberals, you would certainly beat me with a bad back not the result of any fault on my part. But if it is an intellectual contest... I am quite confident of my ability to knock you out intellectually as if you were sparring  in the ring with Mike Tyson.   

As for standing for America as opposed to some other country... (1) there are other countries that have as valid rights to exist and to national pride, and (2) "American" does not imply some specific culture. There are parts of New Mexico that have people who settled there who typically represent cultural mixes of Spanish and First Peoples culture who have been there from roughly the time of the Cavalier settlement of Jamestown and the Pilgrim settlement of Massachusetts Bay. Since the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 those people in New Mexico  have been as legitimately "American" as you and I. Then consider some Americans who look little like the English settlers on America's east coast because their ancestors were dragooned from Africa to do cheap labor on behalf of... you know... by default those people are Americans in accordance with the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. (On occasion I hear someone saying "I am a 10th Amendment American", and all I can think of is "What about the 13th, 14th, and 15th?"). As the historian David Hackett Fischer described the descendants of African slaves in the New World, the slave-owners stripped them of all African heritage except for their genes, and what we consider "black culture" in America is something formed here in America, often with great ingenuity and imagination -- but it is distinctly American and does not fit in any way in Africa.    
   

Quote:As far as demonizing, if you do it ( which you still do) you should expect to see it coming back at you   in return regardless whether you believe ( are able to take ownership and admit it or stop it) you're   guilty of it    or not. Honestly, I don't care what you believe about yourself or me, it's what I see about you and know about myself that counts. I'm not a racist but I know that there is a difference good and bad black people, brown people, white people, yellow people and red people these days and the bad are  no longer restricted to the poor people. The fact is, I've met a helluva lot more people and been to a helluva lot more areas  than you or anyone else on the liberal side has been because none of you do what I do for a living or do what I enjoy doing with my free time. I'm related to a rural area that I've been visiting since I was a little kid.

What you say about Bob you largely say about me... or David Horn... or Eric... or others. The person who denies something "I am not a racist" often accuses himself of something close. At least you recognize that there are good and bad in all groups -- but you could have adopted that meme from a liberal. We do not own that meme. You may know people, but your knowledge of ideas is decidedly low in development. your discussion of physical sparring with people to show what is true or right is void. I don't want to get in a fight with Mike Tyson, but I could rip him to pieces in an intellectual match. I am surprisingly adept at tearing down people who claim intellectual superiority. I know my limits and I consider them embarrassing. That is not new; such is the teaching of Socrates. 

Much of the problem comes from people who consider themselves well-learned despite knowing little yet think themselves better than the experts. Donald Trump is a prime example.