03-10-2020, 02:23 PM
(03-10-2020, 05:16 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(03-09-2020, 11:42 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:(03-08-2020, 11:21 PM)TheNomad Wrote: I guess it is just too damned difficult to address the questions posed and to make up our own and then respond to it as if that's what the thread is about.
Is this filed inside reddit somewhere?
We all use phrases like "The Economy", I guess I am asking every person seeing this to determine for themselves WHAT IS THAT.
Then, when you have made the determination, can that THING you imagined for that word, can you be OK with that thing being called OK when so many human beings In America do not have walls around them at night.............. for warmth, protection, for whatever you - yourself - deem it a good thing to live inside of walls.
can YOU be ok with that
I suppose that answer will be different for everyone who seeks to answer it. Only, make sure you do ask it. Then, try to ask others. It isn't a loaded question. You will not die from asking it.
You may perish from your answer tho
[here is the time when i admonish the Powers here, I just now noticed I have zero percent warning. that should change]
The answer to your question is no.
Unfortunately, the answer is not the same for all people, and is one of several that separates red and blue.
Some people want a copious supply of super-cheap labor, and most people would like to escape being underpaid and overworked yet feeling no security in such. Some would be masters, yet few would volunteer to be slaves.
Economic history shows the instability of extreme inequality which portended the economic meltdowns of 1929-1932 and 2007-2009... It's back. People produce and yet cannot consume anything near their productivity because wages have been kept artificially low.
Quote:Not all have equally hard hearts.
I have just been reading Man's Search for Meaning (Victor Frankl) on his experiences in the concentration camp. It's the hard-hearted people who do the worst. Kindness remains a virtue; without it, everything is debased.
Quote:I have called it tribal thinking.
Tribal politics (I do not refer to Indian Reservations) in modern or near-modern societies create messy politics. Under Satan Hussein in Iraq it meant that many were indulged (but knew enough to not criticize the Great and Infallible Leader) and others got the shaft -- hard. In the current mess that is Iraqi politics, the tribal structure of life remains, and political life is even messier.
Donald Trump has attempted to introduce tribalism into American politics -- and at that he has succeeded. Maybe he has yet to establish the terror that Saddam Hussein cultivated, but that is a certainty if his political legacy should be entrenched.
Quote:The reds will do what is best for people like them, which is usually understood as white, well off, evangelicals.
It is hard to imagine people who so reject modernity being well off...but one can live well despite believing in young-earth creationism, that the Founding Fathers were closet Fundamentalists, and that Donald Trump is wonderful. The people who have any chance of escaping poverty (except by winning the Super-Duper Megabucks Lotto) as a rule put a high value on learning and formal education. Oh, what about blue-collar trades? Machinists, as an example, need at least mathematics of the type offered in college preparatory programs in high school.
Quote:The blues tend to think of all men being created equal politically, and would provide government goods and service equally with all. America has traditionally been tribal, but has always moved in the direction of equality, if in fits and starts. These are broadly the S&H cycles.
But it has been less tribal, especially when Americans see a common danger. Does it take a depression and Axis aggression to bring out our best as a nation?
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.