04-28-2020, 11:22 PM
(04-28-2020, 09:57 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(04-28-2020, 11:39 AM)Warren Dew Wrote:(04-28-2020, 05:48 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: But there are more options than the two unacceptable extremes.
Yes. But they're not necessarily "in the middle". More than likely they are off to one side.
Washington is not the only state on the west coast doing well.
Some politicians and corporate heads still put green paper above grandma. There are also many who will compel the ordinary worker to work in unsafe conditions while maintaining themselves in an isolation that keeps them safe. They will shunt safe solutions aside, anything to save them their little green pieces of paper. The latest example is getting Trump to finally use his power to establish and guide use of critical resources, not to make testing, PPE, ventilators and other critical medical gear available, but to compel workers into unsafe environments while withhold compulsions to force the corporations to implement safeguards. It becomes about keeping the corporations safe from lawsuits. They can just claim to have followed government orders.
Shunt the solutions off to the side if you want. They ought to be taken seriously. It is typical of a conservative not to seek them out, to seek their green paper, to kill grandma.
... all that makes such people feel safe in making such decisions is that they have no fear of a revolution that will topple, dispossess, and judge them. If such decisions are made in callous disregard of human life, especially if those who made such decisions decided that people will die to protect or enhance their profits, then they would be literal murderers. Revolutionary justice? There is nothing revolutionary about trying killers for murder.
But such people will more likely face law suits. Ford Motor Company lost huge money for putting a bolt on a location on a Ford Pinto that , if the car were wrecked, could easily pierce the gas tank and cause an explosion. Saying that a politician excused or ordered such will not exculpate persons who made such a decision.
Trump is attempting to 'give' us a hybrid economy, one with the worst features of Commie rule (a command society devoid of competition) and of capitalism at its most rapacious with an entrenched elite responsible to nobody but capable of maximizing profits for aristocratic privilege. I hate to use the political f-word to describe that... but that also goes along with the political system representing ownership by industry and bureaucratic privilege within powerful organizations.
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.