Presidential election, 2016

[pbrower2a]

(07-13-2016, 10:40 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(07-13-2016, 09:25 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(07-13-2016, 02:35 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(07-13-2016, 11:40 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: When people making huge incomes off sweetheart deals with the federal, state, and local governments; people making easy money as landowners and landlords while living off low-touch investments; executives being paid very well for treating subordinates badly; and shysters operating legitimized rackets (licit loansharking) go down -- that's when the economy works for workers instead of working for everyone but working people. But beware: that is an America in which our cities resemble Berlin in the summer of 1945.

While I won't disagree that things could get real ugly, I don't know that even Occupy and Black Lives Matter together could match the bomb carrying capacity of the Eighth Air Force.

Could. Another possibility is something like the French Revolution. Is the Millennial Generation as hostile to entrenched elites? Will it have a choice to be otherwise?

I'm not sure about that.  The Eighth and their companion units dropped a lot of bombs.

On the two most evil of Evil Empires that ever existed. I doubt that we will ever get that bad.

Quote:I also think that before the Millenials (and don't count out the other generations contributing) mount a full scale revolution, the ballot box will produce at least one truly radical president.  If FDR's efforts hadn't worked I suspect there would have been a Communist insurrection.

This time the only possible "radical" President that the ballot box could get us is Donald Trump. He will prove Radical Right if elected.

FDR saved America, and we may yet get an FDR-like leader.

Quote:Right now there is a lot of denial of the violence.  A lot of willful disbelief.  The shooters are described as lone nuts, troubled to insane, not a single courageous man of conviction among them.  Playwright paints 'ammosexual' with a broad brush, and he is not entirely unrepresentative of how folks think about those who are turning to violence.  Those using violence are sick and disturbed rather than seeing a sick and disturbed culture than needs to be changed.  The notion that the People could use force to change the culture is sneered at.  Thus, I feel safe in saying the spiral of violence hasn't really gotten underway, not when you compare it with the Berlin 45 photo above.  I do take Berlin 1945 and Atlanta 1864 as examples of how bad things have to get before people will consider letting go of their world views, or might surrender to superior force and go along with the progressives, still thinking blacks ought to be slaves or that Hitler should have found a way to complete his plans.

We the American people are very much in denial about the unsustainability of our economic and political realities. Can we have this much inequality both of opportunity and result and get away with it? How long can we put up with economic leadership and political life subservient to such economic leadership intensifying the harshness of inequality?

People obsessed with violence as a solution are themselves sick. yes, that goes to the intended apex of power that some Americans seem to want. Donald Trump endorses political violence if it serves his political ends.

If we are fortunate we will have some revolution of the type that swept central and Balkan Europe in 1989 and 1990. Government by lobbyist, an inchoate form of tyranny, must go if we are to have a democracy. Maybe we will need the questionable solution of inflation to trivialize so much personal debt. Other countries (and America in the past) had the wisdom to make college inexpensive so that people not only had but saw the opportunity. So if we have plenty of well-educated people working on assembly lines -- well, that's how we get some really-good shop stewards.

Quote:Think about how we are talking past each other, not hearing what each other are saying, not comprehending the perspective that makes other believe so intensely the opposite of one's own opinion.  What does it take to make someone with strong values change their mind about pushing their politics and world views?  See Berlin 1945 or Atlanta 1864.

Some things really will have to go past us. So it is with ethnic and religious bigotry. Are you surprised when I laugh at people who push creationism or such pseudo-intellectual garbage as Afrocentrism or the junk history of David Barton? Some people believe stuff that is undeniably wrong. So if you have four cats in a house and call the dog in that house a cat, how many cats do you have? Four. No matter how vehemently you insist that the dog is a cat it is still not a cat.

Quote:I really hope that some elected progressive president gets a Congress that can be worked with before we start comparing bomb tonnage with the Eighth.  There seems to be time yet.  The rejection of terror as a domestic political tool was very strong after OKC and again after September 11th.  That could change.  Right now, after a cop kills a black, or after a black kills a cop, the dominant message is "This has to stop."  If the spiral was escalating, the dominant response would be to get a bunch of people together and kill enough of those other guys that they will be forced to back down.  That's how a true spiral works.  That's what it takes for a true 4T crisis transformation to resolve.  Thus, I don't think the spiral is really cooking up yet.

Do black lives matter? They must, lest America be debased. There was a time when black lives did not matter except in an accounting of assets of slave masters. But it is still a very bad idea to treat the police with anything other than deference -- and better yet, do nothing that will get one in trouble with the law. I can say that just as well of white dopers as of black 'thugs'.  Remember -- without law and order, civil liberties, elections, and human rights are mere cant. As for Black Lives Matters -- when the Nazis or Klan confront them, they will be the first to want the cops in.

Quote:We've had a few T4T posters talk about violence.  Not many.  I see it as possible.  I don't see it as desirable.  I don't think folks ought to get enthusiastic about a all out violent 4T crisis until they have some clue about what they are fighting for.  Yes, we need to check the power of the elites.  What does one want to do to check the power of the elites?  I'd be tempted to start by never voting for anyone to takes corporate campaign financing, repeal Citizens United, and go on from there.  Bernie had a fine agenda as well.

I see political violence as an anathema. But when it happens, historical realities before the violence erupts usually suggest inevitability after the fact, much of that inevitability either outright cruelty, revenge-seeking, malign neglectfulness, or even the attitude "do unto others before they can do unto you".

Bernie Sanders still has a fine agenda. But does that agenda need him? Not really. It can stand on its own if someone else adopts it.

Quote:But before one tears down, before one starts thinking like the Eighth Air Force, one might want some real idea of what should be rebuilt on top of the ruins.

Considering the great destruction of such cities as Cleveland and Detroit without a war, and entirely due to economic collapse...