Who else would like politics to be humdrum?

[JasonBlack]

(02-15-2022, 12:43 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Trump was a dick in his policies; his twitter remarks mean nothing by comparison. Trump and GW Bush were the worst ever on policy, and that's what counts. Trump unleashed total war on the environment from which we may never recover. Whoever ignores climate breakdown and the urgent need to force businesses to change their products is fiddling while the USA burns and floods away. Such attitudes are unacceptable in my opinion. They are symptoms of the fact that willingness to take needed action by a government has been brainwashed out of the people by 40 years of Reaganomics. Next to Bush and Trump, Reagan was the worst president ever. Trump just continued his absurd tax breaks and deregulation and kept inequality and racism going. His was a government of, by and for the billionaire class only, and a growing tyranny and total assault on democracy and a war on truth, built on demagogic appeals to himself as the only man who can fix things; a would-be Mussolini. As for FDR, Wilson and Jackson, it's a mixed bag I admit, but those who criticize them might be criticizing what they did right; it all depends. FDR was the best of a bad lot (along with Lincoln probably) among US presidents. He did some evil, but I wonder if what you are calling his evil decisions, are what I would choose to call his evil decisions. You seem to be a free-market conservative, a stance with which I disagree.

some of this is getting a little buzzword-y, I'll break down a few of my thoughts on these topics
1) Even as a capitalist, Reagan was honestly kind of a cunt.  Less so because he cut taxes (they were ridiculous, I'm glad he did), and more because he intentionally spread the AIDS epidemic because he wanted the gay people to die and pushed illegal drugs into the streets so he could have an excuse to arrest more inner city blacks.
2) As a conservative, I like the basic idea of environmentalism. The idea of "you have the responsibility to fix/pay for something you damaged" is a concept I can understand readily. What I hate about environmentalism is the culture of misanthropy that so often comes along with it. How all they do is try to guilt trip humans for being so "materialistic", even for basic shit like having to drive to work (you know...so they can eat and pay bills), using electricity to run the refrigerator and/or watch TV after a stressful day of work. There are also a lot of intellectually dishonest claims made about it, but I won't go into those because that's not really the point (ie, I'm not a climate change denier).
3) The majority of the reason I hate the welfare state isn't because "capitalism" or "it gives money to lazy people", but, as Thomas Sowell put it "the black family unit survived 300 years of slavery only to be destroyed in a single generation by the welfare state". Families are much more functional when they have to actually work together and aren't completely dependent on government.  
4) No one ever explains what they mean by racism. Does it exist? Yes, I've seen at least a few examples, but generally people either provide no evidence, or provide claims which are bloody ridiculous hasty deductions that often contradict each other (mundane example: I heard being called "racist" for not wanting to see Black Panther, and other people being called "racist" for seeing it on opening night because they should have left that time for the black people to see it). It's the ultimate "boy who cried wolf" of the modern age, where the examples of actual racism slip through the cracks because people's attention is so readily diverted to fake examples or they've just tuned it out entirely due to compassion fatigue or rhetoric that never matches their observations. 

Quote:Nah, we don't need Patriarchy anymore. Women are much wiser rulers, as we can see in history. We need more women in charge, as Obama said. We needed Hillary Clinton, not Donald big daddy Trump. He examplified everything wrong with patriarchy; sole interest in money and abuse of women. Charlton Heston was an excellent example of bad patriarchy, waving his stupid gun around and shouting "from my cold dead hands!" What a creep he was! And a very bad actor too.

I'd like to see more evidence for that. There are a few examples like Elizabeth I, but overall, I think that claim is unsubstantiated. 
but...yes, he shouted "from my cold dead hands" to people who wanted to take his guns. Being willing to fight for your freedom is...the essence of what being an American is, and when that essence is under attack, we should be up in arms about it. In a crisis in particular, you need fighters, people who thrive on the necessary conflict that is required to bring back peace. Women who are up to and desirous of this task are few and far between. 

Quote:We don't need men shoving their weight around and dominating an abused and restricted wife and children seen but not heard in stupid and unhistorical un-traditional alienated suburban nuclear families that limit human potential for caring and have only an economic purpose and the desire to keep women and children restricted and narrow-minded and a community culturally impoverished and lonely.

Boomers have a very different memory of what was, for the other generations during that time, often the best period of their lives ("The High" is generally remembered fondly for a reason). Women reported much higher levels of happiness during this era, probably because they strongly dislike their current existence where they're expected to live exactly the same lifestyle as a man in spite of 1/17 the levels of testosterone and being markedly higher on both trait neuroticism and trait agreeableness 

Quote:And the welfare state was what we needed; not the neoliberal trampling of peoples government in favor business abuse of the people unleashed by Reagan for no reason whatever, which has created horrific and unnecessary income inequality, the resulting social problems and lack of health care, and economic stagnation for young people today. Welfare scapegoating was never correct, and never to blame for family breakdown. This was largely due to destruction and neglect in black communities and a youth culture of disregard for education.

see above

Quote:And Gen X should get over its resentment of boomers, largely misplaced, and start contributing their role as managers and servers as we restart progress in the 2020s.

In order for that to happen, boomers need to quit speaking in terms of abstract platitudes and start caring more about results than moral crusades. It's one thing to get over something that has already happened to you, it's another to ask someone to get over something which is currently happening. Gen X are not all as selfish as you think they are. Sure, they want privacy, they want to have a higher standard of living, but they're also the generation most invested in childcare and generally willing to make a lot of sacrifices for people they care about. Why are Gen X and Millennials so much more "externally focused" than boomers? ...because most of us have been poor. You have to be externally focused when you want to feed yourself. You have to be externally focused when systems that were supposed to work aren't reliable and you need to do it yourself. If you're constantly railing against the system because you don't like concepts like materialism, selfishness, etc, you never get around to focusing on the real world, focusing on the less sexy, often mundane task of actually building the systems to bring about what you want.

Serving as "managers and servers" is precisely what Gen X are already doing for the most part, and largely, they get ignored for it, or worse, seen as "too materialistic" in spite of doing the work which is most needed as both boomers and millennials go on about "calling", "consciousness" and other words that help them maintain a feeling of specialness (again, I say this as a millennial, it's kind of our Achilles heel as a generation).

Quote:I have my doubts about your diagnosis. I am not sure what training you have in mind, and why men should get it and not women. I don't see any diminution of respect for athletics in our society, for example. On the contrary, it is too highly venerated, and those who study are still considered nerds, although perhaps less so than decades ago. If you doubt masculinity is highly valued, perhaps you didn't watch the national obsession on TV this Sunday? And look at the characters involved?

Frankly, the Superbowl is a bunch of tribal nonsense. I can understand it's appeal from the standpoint of creating some level of social cohesion, but it has taught men that masculinity is about screaming and drama, rather than quiet strength and exercising authority over your domain. Imo, sports are primarily games for boys, and men should be focused more on industry and raising strong, well-educated children.

Quote:What we have been uninstructed to do in the last 40-50 years is have any sense of civic responsibility beyond your respect for just having some stuff and being left alone. We don't even have civic classes in schools anymore. Is it any wonder that young people don't get the government they want, when they never learned how to vote and be involved and participate in citizens' government to deal with real issues? This is the real breakdown that has happened, and it is the direct result of the tax revolt and neoliberal Reaganomics and the excessive veneration for "free enterprise" which is really slavery to bosses. The owners of our society are not interested in a well-informed and well-educated citizenry; it's against their interests.

first part: yes
second part: no. keep in mind there is only one period of history where taxes have been that high, and that most periods of greater civic participation throughout human history occurred under conditions of much lower taxes