Who else would like politics to be humdrum?

[Eric the Green]

(02-15-2022, 02:09 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:

(02-15-2022, 12:43 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Trump was a dick in his policies; his twitter remarks mean nothing by comparison..... 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. 

2) Unwise excesses and unfair attacks on people exist in all social movements, I suppose. Since I don't think correcting pollution and climate change can mostly be put on individuals, I don't blame people for commuting especially when housing prices for living close to work are so high (I live in CA). Using electricity is not a bad thing at all, although conservation is wise. The real need is to require the CEOs to change their products (e.g. stop mining and selling fossil fuels and switch to renewable energy as soon as possible).
3) the notion that welfare creates dependency is so exaggerated beyond the facts that it is merely a conservative slogan to create opposition to needed social programs. It's nice to work together, but these days work pays too little or jobs are often too scarce because of neoliberalism.
4) Your comments are understandable about racism, but it seems clear that it exists, that it's systemic, and that it's still very abusive in ways that really hurt (the enormous wealth gaps, the degradation of communities, the racial profiling by police and institutions, etc.

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Quote:Nah, we don't need Patriarchy anymore. Women are much wiser rulers, as we can see in history..... 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. 

Not only Elizabeth I, but Elizabeth II, Victoria, Queen Anne; the best rulers well above the average for the male English kings, and many other recent examples like Golda Meir, Angela Merkel, Teresa May, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia.....

We should take more guns away from more of these cold dead hands. Guns are not needed, unless you really are part of a well-regulated militia defending our national/state freedom from attack. Otherwise, guns merely cause unnecessary deaths. They do not guarantee our freedom in any way, otherwise. Men may be better at fighting, but women do it too, and fighting is not the only need in a society seeking progress as well as safety from attack-- which is far from the only defining value in life. Women are better community builders, better at listening and nourishing people, and more empathetic, and those skills are as valuable as more-aggressive skills, if not more so now. The USA has fought few if any wars that really needed to be fought. Arguably, World War II, but that was the inevitable outcome of World War I and its resentments, which was a totally unnecessary war. Most wars are merely fights over who shall be the ruler; it is largely an anarchronism. I am not a pacifist anymore, because there still are just as many brutal and aggressive tyrants in the world as in other times, but that means we need more revolutions, as well as truly defensive actions; not more wars where one ruler tries to take over the territory of another.

Quote: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 

I did not remember the "High" fondly. It was a time when only certain people were admired and the rest unfairly bullied, exiled and insulted. No, it is not fondly remembered by many. Women disliked being mere housewives and locked into such a meaningless and servile occupation. If some resent having to work nowadays, that was because neoliberalism came in with Reagan and forced many to give up any income advancement or accept decline in their family wages, forcing both parents to work for economic reasons.

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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).

I think critics of boomers focus on our moral platitudes or narcissism because that is an easier target than criticizing those who still advocate the policies that we still need and have been denied for all these years since the Boomer youth era; policies that promote opportunity instead of oligarchy, peace instead of unnecessary or imperialistic militarism, climate justice and green lifestyles and business instead of climate breakdown and pollution, fair justice instead of racial profiling, gun control instead of gun obsession.....The reason younger generations are poor now is precisely because Boomer policies were not enacted; instead we got free-market economics that taxes the middle class instead of the wealthy, that allows business to pay poor wages and pollute our environment, that sent our economy overseas or reduced it to machines without compensation, that destroyed needed social programs that protect us from the greedy capricious behavior of the brutal bosses who care nothing about anything except their own wealth. And those younger people who still subscribe to neoliberal tax revolts and neoliberalism and instead blame boomer culture are just perpetuating their own lousy conditions.

And being an idealist, I want to bring about a society in which the arts and spirituality and philosophy are valued. Creative people are indeed special and unique in that way; unless they are so, they are merely copycats. Creativity is the highest value. Indeed, material goals should be distributed fairly so poverty is not so widespread, and doing the work you are called to do and is needed even if not "special" is fine with me, but money is just a means to an end, as we have lost sight of the end. The highest end as the old philosophers said is God, however you conceive the meaning of the word. But it does not mean mammon, or selfishness. It does not mean a society dominated by a wealthy class that wants more for themselves and less for everybody else, and is empowered to get it by tempting anti-tax and anti-government propaganda that calls them the "job creaters" and blames welfare recipients, immigrants and ethnic groups for the troubles which the wealthy themselves have created.

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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.

Why should exercizing authority be respected, admired or aspired to? We need democracy, not authority.

I still am not clear on what training to be masculine should consist of, in your opinion.

I doubt those who train for our athletic obsessions are just doing screaming or drama. It takes strength, discipline, energy and talent. Of course, this exists in both men and women, but football is ultra-masculine and is more than just tribal but shows masculinity is valued. Over-valued in fact.

Well-educated children does not result from the neoliberal, Republican denigration of education as elitist. It results mostly from a well-supported public education system, not home schooling.

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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

no, disagree. The best periods are when the wealthy are expected to contribute their fair share.