09-08-2020, 02:06 AM
(09-08-2020, 12:15 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(09-07-2020, 07:58 AM)David Horn Wrote: Be careful what you wish for. Blue America funds most of government at all levels. If you make it partisan, it could leave your Red America with crumbling schools, no fire or police protection and roads only suited for off-road vehicles.
It's hard to make this case to people who see others rising as a personal loss, when it's just the opposite. Impoverished people don't buy things because they can't. The logic is simple, but the visceral reaction makes it impossible to see. Red America has an idea of vast carnage if they can't rule and keep others in their place, and that's only going to change when it's proven wrong in practice and today's naysayers depart the scene.
You can have Hollywood, whatever is left of Wall Street, whatever is left of Sin City, whatever is left of Amazon. Google, Facebook/Twitter, a group of banks, a few national channels and their cable affiliates, PBS, NPR, whatever is left of the Democratic party and whatever is left of its base as the rest of the country votes to parts ways and move forward as America.
A common theme of fascists. All is corrupt, so we need someone to shake up all the vileness Of course such will require that we surrender our essential liberties and leave everything to some capricious leader. It's just an excuse for tyranny.
Yes, we need to root out corruption and dishonesty in business, but we can rely upon integrity in government. "Wall Street" is where people trade stocks, really shares in existing giant companies. The big gains on initial offerings is no longer to be had because venture capitalists who have some idea of what they are doing in not fully understanding the possible rewards have already made the investments in companies going public. The banks? If you are to rely entirely upon inheritance for getting funds for business then you don't need the successors of the Rothschild lenders. Banking is the difference between feudalism and capitalism.
Quote:If we continue on the path we are on, we will be living in separate countries within a decade
Now or never. But consider this: your "Red" part of America isn't particularly creative or imaginative, and you will depend upon Blue America for movies competently done, Creative people in "Red" America are now rebels who rend your traditional values, showing their consequences. If you think that the only music is country music, then consider that it may come from a very "Red" state -- but a very "blue" city, Nashville, within it. We in "Blue" America have the port facilities. We have Silicon Valley, which has the software engineers. We have the top universities -- all the Ivy League schools, the "Public Ivies" of the state universities of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, Iowa, Texas, Georgia, Florida, Nebraska, Indiana, Missouri, and even Alabama (Tuscaloosa, Alabama is a relatively-liberal community). We have Stanford, Notre Dame, Vanderbilt (remember what I said of Nashville!), and Rice. That's where the scientific and medical research is done. That is where people learn to hone arguments. That's where people learn how to be the better sorts of K-12 teachers. So if you have no use for academia and want to have people like you as the norm... then maybe you can shut down those dens of iniquity that call themselves universities. The problem is that America -- your America - will get veery stupid very fast.
Guess what? You will still have shysters for a lack of alternatives.
Quote:Yes, blue America seems to still have influence over most blue related governments at most levels these days and seems to be hell bent on going down with them. Dude, you're on the side who doesn't value police protection that doesn't care that it has crumbling schools and doesn't care it causes mass fires that require support from neighboring fire departments. You should really start reading your own posts and applying them to yourself and the side that you're on. You're an old Liberal fool who is nearing the end of life who is not thinking of the young Liberal fools who are going to be left behind to pay the consequences for choosing to be on the wrong side of history.
We need good cops, and it is better that the cops know some liberal arts so that they might be able to persuade people in family arguments that their bickering that has led to violent anger is the problem more than the objects of bickering -- instead of watching violence unfold and shooting the first person who grabs a weapon.
I believe in law and order, and I am very much on the Blue side. Of course lawlessness makes the formality of civil liberties mere cant. On the other side, unjustifiable police brutality is itself lawlessness not compatible with law and order and civil liberties. You can rail about Black Lives Matters all you want -- but it has a narrow purpose, and it is not a "Get Out of Jail, Free" card for African-American offenders. Give Black Lives Mattes what it wants, and criminal offenders will be caught with just enough force to subdue them, and offenders will be taken to jail safely. OK, pull a gun on a cop and expect to die -- but that's what nobody protests now. You might recall that both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have made clear that people who exploit a peaceful protest for criminal deeds violate the rules of civil society and deserve to be apprehended, prosecuted, and incarcerated.
You, Classic X'er, demonstrate why you cannot lead. You stand for an ideology that debases people in the name of a vague tradition that becomes increasingly irrelevant and offensive. Your ideology makes needful change impossible, and reversion to old vices in public life a certainty. Progress depends upon people questioning old ideas for their merits and rejecting those when something is better and available. To be sure, there are old truths that can never be countered, like mathematical and physical laws and the conventions of logic. The rest is typically shakier, including national identity.
I am not convinced of the superiority of "America" as you understand it to my conception. There are plenty of ways in which to be an American, some of those ways being completely exotic to Americans of the time of the Founding Fathers. "America" does not imply a certain ethnic origin or limited range of religious beliefs. "America" has been able to adjust to big changes in America, including the rise of new systems of belief (such as Mormonism). "America" does not imply that 95% of the people exist to enrich, indulge, and obey 2% who get everything as was the case in Imperial Russia. We all know how that went.
You need to get out more.
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.