Trump hits new low in approval poll

[pbrower2a]

(02-27-2021, 05:42 AM)Einzige Wrote:

(02-27-2021, 04:38 AM)treehugger Wrote: If Nazis and Communists both support wars, debt, and tyranny, what's the difference?

I'm a Communist. I support international class war, the abolition of money (and debt with it) and the class dictatorship of the proletariat.

I am a humanist and I consider a social market (as opposed to the high-tech feudalism that America's economic elites dream of that is in practice a toiler's nightmare) and have been close to reaching. I can imagine such a world having both the crushing elitism and economic hereditarianism of a feudal order, brutal repression (anyone who challenges it is killed) even to the extent of having a bureaucratic elite well paid yet completely devoid of responsibility toward the masses. It would be as crushing of the human spirit as a composite of Uncle Tom's Cabin and Nineteen Eighty-Four.  It would support Christianity as offering the reward of pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die as a reward for compliance with the demands of the elites including a slavish servility but offer Hell to anyone who runs afoul of it. Perhaps it even revives the sorts of spectacles of Roman times in which religious dissidents and recalcitrant slaves are offered to bears or Big Cats or otherwise destroyed in analogous entertainments.   

The novel would be called Acirema, a nightmare in which recent trends keep heading in one direction to a paradise for a hereditary elite and a Hell for everyone else. It would be a consequence of attitudes that I associate with followers of the cult of Ayn Rand. Is there a dark side to the utopianism of Randism? It is the social opposite of Marxism, and its believers are extreme "anal sphincters". My brother tells me that the people who invest the time in which to read Rand's Atlas Shrugged and the Fountainhead become insufferable pricks for six months. Then they discover that they have no friends, and that all delights are available for sale -- at dear prices. Because one is a vile "anal sphincter" one gets no love and has no connections to humanize life as might someone with a different set of beliefs. 

I am satisfied that:

1. No prosperity is possible without capital. Capital makes possible the labor-saving devices that make toil productive enough to allow prosperity for people other than owners, administrators, and enforcers, the people who fare well in all systems -- even those in which hunger and exposure are the norm for people who work... and work... and work... within sight of the ostentatious indulgence of elites.

2. A market promotes economic sanity. A market punishes ineptitude that can range from sticking with obsolete techniques of production, product design, managerial style, and distribution with losses. It is possible to look wistfully upon business entities (Penn Central, Sears, Radio Shack,  Steak and Ale, Tower Records, RKO, and RCA) only to realize that they no longer exist for very solid reasons. Profit at its best rewards innovation and service, and losses punish incompetence. 

3. People choose, whatever their religious or ideological heritage, between Good and Evil. The vast majority of people find that human goodness pays off better than does evil. It is impossible to set official rewards for kindness between people, and not even a market can establish that. This said, kindness creates community and indifference breaks it. Marxists and Rand cultists alike ignore this at the peril of their ideologies.

4. Capitalism depends upon thrift, personal restraint, adaptability, and stewardship of scarce resources. It's always tempting to cash out on a business and join some debauch. Some people think it wiser to plow some profits back into the business. Capitalism fares best when the capitalists do not go for unimaginative extravagance. That is the difference between a mom-and-pop business that pays its owners about what a skilled craftsman earns and some drug dealer, pimp, or other racketeer. This assumes that the model of the small-business order who is not so much an exploiter as a rational actor. Systems informed by Marxism obviously include those from Stalinist nightmares to the relatively mild one of Yugoslavia under Tito. Tito recognized that the small-business owner who lacked the means of lording it over the workingman wasn't the bogey of Marxism. Mom-and-pop businesses thrived. Bureaucratized behemoths became state property and remained such. If one is not an exploiter one is not an Enemy of the People under Tito.  

5. Although economic privilege may be a necessary requisite of extraordinary achievement, it rightly comes with responsibility for more than preserving a political order that fosters the system. In a well-run armed service, senior officers live quite well, but they have codes of behavior more rigid than those of the soldiers and sailors. One can be dismissed from the armed services for conduct unbecoming of an officer. A sailor at sea on a naval tour of duty had few means of spending money at sea... but once in port, and once one had some back pay, the bars, bordellos, and casinos awaited. An enlisted naval officer avoided that because the expectations are different. Senior naval officers live quite well even away from the delights of a commercial world. Still, one must act rationally and with some personal restraint. (The Armed Services are now more likely to pay people electronically into a bank account than to pay soldiers cash every month). Officers dare not do such things as go bankrupt, cheat at cards, or contract VD.

6. Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs explains much about human desires. 



This explains much. The most wretched state in life is to have some brutal master deciding whether one lives or dies or either experiences degrading pain or gets some transitory relief from such. Such could be penal servitude in which even survival from day to day is in doubt. Such could be the experience in a torture chamber. That one has title to property or nominal affiliation with a lucrative activity means nothing unless one is compelled to surrender those for the next meal... or not feeling an electrical shock upon one's genitals. Or being whipped by a slave-master. It could also be a terminal situation in life, such as Stage-4 cancer, for which nobody is personally at fault, or being in a burning structure. At this point, you will give anything to get out of the situation. You may confess so that the beatings and other obscene treatments of your body end. You will sign over property and perhaps accept hereditary enslavement. Things might be so bad that death solves all problems. Such an existence is a denial of even the right of an animal. Heck, I can only imagine what a mouse thinks as it is ensnared in a trap or as a cat shreds it alive. That one has the means for an escape to the French Riviera means nothing if stage-4 cancer makes such impossible.    

Safety is something that even a household pet might experience in America. Economic security might be enough to keep one working in mind-numbing, soul-crushing work. "It's a living"... "it puts food on the table" ... "it pays the rent"... "it allows me to attend college so that I can make something of myself"... if one is reasonably competent and diligent it might allow one to work there until one is worn out.  If there is a pension or Social Security, or one has salted away adequate savings, one might get some rest in retirement and perhaps splurge a bit before ending up in the prison known as the "Home for the Golden Years" (there actually is an entity that gives itself that Orwellian moniker). Don't believe everything that  you see in advertising.

Maybe one develops some friendships and love. Perhaps one's employer encourages some family life. You might become a better worker, and if you are in a healthy marriage, you might be more willing to work overtime instead of going on a "hot date". But you are also more dependent on the caprice of the boss. You may become more deferential, and you might now sell off some dreams so that you might get some chance at a promotion. If you are good with words and figures you might become a traveling salesman instead of a factory worker.  On the other hand... you are still a prole, and everyone knows that. Your kinship network and circle of close friends may be the only people who care about you. But that may be enough.  

Feeling good about oneself is trickier. Such may require that one sacrifice some temporary indulgences for the development of skill or professional attainment. This may depend upon connecting to institutions (religious bodies, social clubs, service clubs), and doing things for them for vague rewards. You feel good about what you are doing. 

Self-actualization? I have never been there, so I do not understand it. I doubt that that is possible with Asperger's syndrome. 

There are few cheats.  Religious ecstasy might be one of the few available, which may explain why Death Row is allegedly the most religious place in America. 

7. Human nature is too complicated for facile explanation. Shouldn't that be obvious? The smart people read great fiction to catch some of the complexity of human existence. People whose lives are to simple to reduce to pleasure and pain, economics, and consumerism are mostly pitiable losers. Maybe such people think that they are improving their lives through some sacrifices such as latching onto work that they hate; for this I hope that they succeed. Success will depend upon getting out of a dreary situation without ending up in something worse. Material gain and indulgence goes only so far. Did gangster John Gotti or drug kingpin Pablo Escobar self-actualize? Not in the least. People highly successful at creative activities but otherwise too troubled to fully enjoy their success (Maslow suggested Richard Wagner and Vincent van Gogh as examples) certainly didn't. Neither, as I see it, such authors as Jack Kerouac, pop musicians such as Whitney Houston (cocaine!), or the early film star Fatty Arbuckle. Donald Trump obviously can see nothing higher in life than publicity, power, and indulgence; he is a pathetic failure. Having a good reputation in one's community, getting a reputation for consoling people in distress, and giving solid guidance to people in struggles for life? That might be local clergy or some K-12 school teacher who needs no mansion, flashy clothes, or yacht as one might expect from someone who does get-rich-quick infomercials, as did the late Don Lapre... who committed suicide as the Feds closed in on him for fraud.