11-10-2020, 08:02 PM
(11-10-2020, 10:42 AM)David Horn Wrote:(11-09-2020, 02:58 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(11-05-2020, 12:06 PM)David Horn Wrote: My county went Trump 3 to1. I'm not surprised, but still can't understand the attraction. Most of my neighbors are white, educated and financially comfortable. They're still all-in for the Orange One. I understand the resentment faction, with declining opportunities and stressed lives. What's with the others like my neighbors? Is it all 401k, and screw everything else?
We understand/ know what your side represents these days and we don't get caught up in the emotional drama/aspect that's being largely driven by the blue media these days. We are mainly white (although we are less white than we were before Trump was elected) , pretty well educated (we are much better educated and more seasoned than the typical Democratic/Progressive voter these days) and more well rounded than we're given credit for as well.
In short, we don't need your politicians or your third world politics because we are all quite capable of standing on our own two feet and surviving so to speak. Just so you understand what you're really dealing with, the number of individuals like me in the country grew substantially over the last four years and the blues (Democratic side) had to scrap the bottom of the barrel of society for the votes that it needed to win and the situation for most of those who are on the Democratic side ain't going to get better for them than it is for them right now either. What you are going to see is two countries functioning more and more like two countries than anyone has ever seen in this country before now and a realization by those in DC that there is nothing that they are able to do about the growing partisan divide that exists in this country today.
You state well the belief that everyone makes it on his or her own, except it doesn't work that way. Mostly, you get the benefit of schooling and good health as a communal good, then are lucky enough to parlay that into success. Well here's a clue: that's the model we all follow, or fall by the wayside. One bad event in our lives can end that beautiful rise to the top in this dog-eat-dog nation, that wouldn't be that way in a more progressive one ... but carry-on.
Most of us need second chances at one time or another. Some of us take chances with careers that don't pan out. Some of us latch onto companies that eventually fail. Some of us find that our jobs disappear when a technology goes obsolete and the plant at which we do our jobs is more obsolete than we are. Economic meltdowns happen often in a free-wheeling capitalist society. Some of us work gig jobs.
If we are to have a free-enterprise system, then we also need second, third, fourth... maybe even tenth chances. We have only seven years between our chances to declare bankruptcy... well, some business efforts just don't work. If people are to seek extraordinary success, then we should also expect some failures. Excessive caution is not good for a free-wheeling society. Maybe it might be necessary in a system such as the old Soviet Union, in which everybody passes the buck on anything that goes wrong. I suggest that if you haven't seen it, watch the HBO miniseries Chernobyl about the infamous meltdown of the nuclear power plant. In the end technical decisions were being made by none other than President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who was not a trained engineer.
If our economic system cannot ensure prosperity, then perhaps the system needs to ensure that people not starve and die of exposure. Big Business, which can hire and fire en masse, makes a welfare state a necessity.
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.