The Log Cabin Libertarians?

[pbrower2a]

(04-18-2022, 09:06 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(04-18-2022, 12:01 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: Right Mr. Brower. Conservatives have launched an all-out attack on people who are different; trans, gay/lesbian, people of color, immigrants, the poor, the middle class; you name it. This has gone far beyond whether trans people can play women's sports. Now we are not allowed to know our history or understand people who are gay. Healthcare givers who help trans people are now threatened with long prison terms. Women are being forced back into back alleys and coathangers if they don't want to carry a child, or even use an abortion pill. The conservatives are appealing to fear and prejudice to get votes for their billionaire masters. That's all it amounts to. The Republican Party becomes more openly Nazi every day. They are a total threat to our democracy, our republic, our climate, our world.

Yes and no.  The Right has been building toward this time for decades, and now they are finally in a position to strike.  Ask yourself: how did they managed to get the lower middle class to support them, and that is beginning to include Black and Hispanic people in similar circumstance?  The answer isn't hard: the Left has marched around and waved signs but produced very little that has altered the lives of these people and taken credit for none that it has.

Quote:The Goldwater-Reagan Right has morphed into the Gingrich-Trump Right, which is itself a generational change. The Goldwater-Reagan Right was strictly economic in its objectives, believing that a government that fostered the enrichment of people already filthy rich would create the means (investment and economic growth) that would solve more problems than would a welfare state. Its assumption was that a bigger paycheck  (tax cuts might be a pittance for such people as hairdressers and janitors, but those would be real) and lower prices at K-Mart would be adequate compensation for the loosening of regulations, tax cuts for the super-rich, and the weakening of labor unions. If life is better, then few have grounds for complaint (other than the pitiable, helpless people to be obliged to fend for themselves and fail). The Gingrich-Trump Right makes no pretense about any sympathy toward anyone not rich. This Right is far more compatible with wealth-cult Christianity (the "Gospel of Greed") that sees failure in people when the agenda of enriching th e Right People at the expense of everyone else consigns everyone else to economic failure. Their ideal is a world that divides neatly between "winners" and "losers", with winners  who have taken advantage of breaks and then consigning the losers with few exceptions (those who have succeeded with extreme efforts in gambles unlikely to pay off. Carry this to its logical conclusion, and the elites ride rough-shod over the masses and fault the masses for moaning when they hurt.

The GI's, Right or Left, morphed into irrelevancy due to the usual effect of time, and so will Boomers, Right and Left. It is easy to see clownish characters among the X Right (Madison Cawthorn, Marjorie Taylor-Greene, Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz) but do not be fooled: the Right of Generation X can sacrifice these  on behalf of right-wing figures of unrelieved elitism, ruthlessness, and sadism. They believe even more firmly in an Evil Empire internally evil for extreme hierarchy, repression of science in favor of ideology, religion that endorses uncritical obedience instead of the clear demands of rabbinical and Gospel teachings on responsibilities toward the poor, hyper-natalist policies intended to foster a population boom (especially among "trustworthy" white people),crony capitalism, and wars for profit. If this sounds like a Marxist critique of capitalism, then such reflects that bad capitalist orders all fit a Marxist critique of capitalism!

Quote:The Right takes credit for all wins, shifts the blame for all failures; they never wanted to make anyone's lives better, they just wanted to make them bitter.  It's easy to play to people's fears and hates.  They added a faux honor or two: the hyper work ethic (those people are just lazy, but not you), protected gun rights and validation of their place in society above "them".

We are in a struggle to determine whether our old virtues or our old vices (vices are never genuine innovations) will prevail. At times, conservatives and liberals have split in their relative valuations of the virtues. If it were simply an inversion between the emphases that Democrats and Republicans had in the 1950's, then we would simply see inversions of electoral results by the states. I took delight to show the similarities between Eisenhower (R, 1952 and 1956) and Obama (D, 2008 and 2012) then recognize similarities between the two (caution, integrity, respect for expertise and learning, reverence for protocol and precedent, and recognition for the merit of tradition even if those are not one's own).

Note well that Donald Trump is about everything that Obama isn't. I'm not going to say that Ike's opponent Adlai Stevenson was an awful person. John McCain had his virtues. Mitt Romney may have had his faults but at least he could see through the partisan haze that Donald Trump is a horrible person.

Quote:Elizabeth Warren has an op-ed in today's NY Times that is a call to arms.  She and Bernie both get it; neither is a spring chicken.  I'm afraid that we'll be waiting for another champion when the 2024 election results roll in.  Let's how that by 2028 we're still enough of a democracy for a real turnabout.  Its' not coming from Biden and, God knows, it's never coming from the GOP.

Yup!