The Partisan Divide on Issues

[David Horn]

(02-17-2020, 01:08 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(02-11-2020, 09:56 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(02-10-2020, 03:03 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(02-10-2020, 11:43 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: I'd be wary of making Constitutional changes through a Constitutional convention while the hard Right still has great power. The Hard Right would love to commit us to a Christian and Corporate state that represents economic and bureaucratic power at the expense of all else, and uses a fundamentalist interpretation of Christian ethics as a mechanism of enforcing a plutocratic order.

That would merely be a replay of the Gilded Age, when the company clerics spoon-fed religiosity to the working class to benefit the owners.  It worked then and may again.

Such would be a nightmarish world, basically a Marxist stereotype of capitalism. It would require a populace barely literate as was so in America during the Gilded Age. Say what you want about the intellectual mediocrities that flock to Trump -- many other Americans do not. 

I would expect the economic elites to be as evil as ever, making hypocritical displays of fraudulent simulations of piety only to return to their indulgence and cruelty. So how does the Establishment cut the norm of education to the elementary level? One would have to replace PBS with pro wrestling on TV... there are limits to dumbing-down of public life.

And yet I have wondered if it is perspective.  It is not evil to try to get one’s best for one’s company.  To do something once is not special.  It becomes evil when as a group or a class one seeks dominion over another, for the robber barons to leave the people with no left over choice.

And yet these are the same thing.  You have to ban the acts of individual companies in such a way to limit the acts of all corporations or classes.

I think this has a good deal with how the red and blue groups perceive things.

It’s okay to believe in Santa Claus, unless you assume he’ll be there to keep you afloat. After all, there is a limit to irrationality.  I’m afraid half the country has equated irrational and correct. That makes a lot of things existential that shouldn’t be.  DJT has played on that theme since The Apprentice. So far, it’s working for him.  Nothing has fallen apart so far. He’s hoping it lasts until late in his second term, at least.  So he bows-out a winner, and we get to clean up aisle 4. 

Worse: Don Jr. is waiting in the wings — worse than dad, I suspect.