Election 2020

[pbrower2a]

(11-12-2020, 08:21 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(11-12-2020, 10:13 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(11-12-2020, 05:34 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(11-12-2020, 01:25 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Biden represents the old values ( FDR/ LBJ/ Obama values) or failing values as you say. Popularity isn't much of a factor when it comes to ones actual abilities to get anything done. You can say what you want but Trump got things done. We're still more or less a fifty country that's more or less dead locked which is a far cry from where FDR was, LBJ was and Obama was back in 08'.

Racism and white supremacy is the old values.  Being in favor of the working man is the new.  Science over fantasy is the new.

You are sort of correct but mostly wrong in saying popularity isn’t a factor.  The dominant factor of the unraveling is that there was a bigger white supremacy vote than minority and worker vote.  As a result, jobs went overseas, benefits cut, labor unions weakened, and the younger generations sunk into poverty as domestic spending was consistently cut.  The red were centered on the Neo con, the racists, the elite, the religious.  Culture war issues were put ahead of the working man and the minorities.

It doesn’t look like that is going to continue.

Let me weigh-in with a third opinion.  The old values are the Reagan neoliberal fantasies that we're all alone and we either make it or we're failures.  It's been sold in many flavors for the last 40+ years, and is now perceived wisdom.   Trump's followers believe it, even though it hurts them every day.  But the competitive model is now the only model, so they cheer-on their side and take a hit for the team.  It's zero-sum, and they need to win!

If the Dems ever succeed, it will be with a cooperative model that allows everyone to gain, not just a few.  First, the idea needs to be believed, and that's where the challenge lies.  Remember, Goldwater sold the neoliberal fantasy in 1964 and got slaughtered. New ideas don't just take hold on their own.

You're really talking about self reliance and our commitment to self reliance and independence since the two go hand in hand. I get the impression that you don't like us very much for that reason  and view us as a threat to to an ideology which cultivates and requires the opposite for it to work. Well, guess what, there's 60 some million of us and 10 million more who want to be like us who showed up on election day during a national pandemic that half the country has been traumatized by its existence.

Do you know what self-reliance really is?

We were more self-reliant in the past, when technologies were cruder and business practices were different. I look at an old movie such as Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times (from 1936) and notice that the department store in which the Tramp character got a job as a night watchman sold fabric to be sewn into clothes to fit Wifey's husbands, kids, and herself. To be sure, the traditional department store seems to be a dying institution, but the practice of women buying fabric to sew into clothes was over before my time (and I am old. 64 is old enough to be something of a misfit in this world). Now let's look at the cars of the 1930's. The cars operated on machinery far easier to understand than what we now have. Someone with my below-average mechanical skills could have done some minor repairs on parts far easier to identify as culprits and replace or even mend than is so on their more recent analogues. (OK, cars have catalytic converters, safety devices, and of course air-conditioning units that make things safer, more ecologically-friendly, more comfortable --- and much more complex). I remember people making their own ice cream for an ice-cream "sociable" because there might not be an ice-cream parlor readily available.  If you want even more self-reliance, go back to the days of the horse and buggy, when electronic entertainments were scarce and not very good. If you wanted some music you heard it live or made your own. 

What killed self-reliance? 

1. Technology that allowed people to do things easily that were once difficult. Selecting a frequency on a radio set is far easier than playing a violin. 
2. Big Business, which made technologies easy to use, and available cheaply through mass production and mass marketing. 
3. People leaving rural life for the Big City (or later, the suburbs.
4. People insisting on more 'professional' entertainment than what they struggled to do. Have you ever heard a small child violin, usually not in tune?  5. The welfare state that Big Business makes necessary due to the economic dislocations that come with a mass economy and technological change. 

Ideology plays little role in the decline of self-reliance.