Controversial Political Opinions

[Eric the Green]

(07-19-2022, 04:25 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:

(07-19-2022, 03:45 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: You are missing the point. It is the bosses who support Republicans. Employees support Democrats.

I am not missing the point. Your point is simply incorrect. Mark Zuckerberg is a Democrat. So is Jack Dempsey, so is Jeff Bezos, so is Warren Buffet, so is Mark Cuban. Even Donald Trump and Elon Musk were Democrats until recently.

It doesn't matter if Zuckerberg is a Democrat or not. Manchin calls himself a Democrat too, although he is bought-and-paid-for. What matters is that real Democrats are willing to restrain the corporate raiders, and that Republicans boost them and enable them.

Quote:

Quote:Democrats and especially progressive ones care about people and the resources they need. Republicans care only about money.

over-simplification if there ever was one

But quite a correct one.

These days we have an unpopular two-party monolith, one a center-left party willing to enact a balanced mixed-economy system, but whose only ability seems to be to obstruct some kinds of extremism sometimes, and an extreme-right party dedicated to greed, prejudice and the destruction of what's left of our democracy entirely, and which mostly just obstructs everything. And a public too cynical to take notice and act.

Quote:

Quote:Politicians within both parties are "political animals" because that's their profession. That is neither good nor bad. It is the decisions they make that are.

We're gonna have to disagree on that. Being a party animal makes someone inherently un-trustworthy.

I thought you were discussing "political animals?"

Gee, I'm surprised you disagree with my points in this rather-impolite rant of mine

Quote:

Quote:[quote]Progressives are not about telling other people how to live their "lives". "Life" is not making money. The "controlling people" that Democrats do is controlling how bosses treat everyone else. Without that control, they treat them and ALL of us very badly. That is the entire point.

The most draconian lockdown measures were all in blue states, and the most aggressive censorship of the last 20 years has come from the left. With that said, Australia, Canada and western Europe have been much, much worse than the United States on both fronts. Americans of all political sides value some sort of freedom above basically everything else. We care about it even more than we do safety and prosperity. Europeans simply don't believe in "give me liberty of give me death!". To them, freedom is just one of several variables to consider with regards to policy, and if they have to take a little (or in this case....a lot) away from people for the sake of expediency, they will usually role over quickly.

A government taking temporary health measures to protect the people is not "draconian". What is amazing is that in our still-3T neoliberal society a mostly-Republican crowd can be mobilized to resist what in earlier turnings would have been accepted without protest. It just shows how low neoliberal free-market crap has taken us. Really pathetic and disgusting!

And some statues being taken down and names changed hardly tampers with individual choices in life and freedoms either.

Our society is willing even-more than Europe to roll over and accept an autocratic, entertaining demagogue attaining presidential power and a Party dedicated to taking down our entire democracy and republic. We are no longer MORE dedicated to "freedom" than the Europeans are, but LESS. They are willing and able to not elect a LePen and to take down a Johnson than we are able to take down a Trump and a Bannon.

Quote:

Quote:Bosses cannot be trusted to do the right things, and that includes Zuckerberg and the rest of the Silicon Valley bosses. Democrats are willing to control them; Republicans want them to "be free to live their lives", which means free to exploit other people and the environment however they want at the expense of the rest of us. And to deceive us with false "freedom" slogans and appeals to fear and prejudice.

imo, most of their promises have been rather empty in this regard, kind of like post-Reagan Republicans promising to "balance the budget". People today of all political persuasions deserve the cynicism they feel over politics.

If you are saying here that the people deserve their own cynicism, on that we agree. The only reason for the cynicism people feel today is their own cynicism. They fail to follow what's going on, which just enables the Republican enablers of capitalist corporate destruction to ruin our society and its politics even further-- and extremists on the Left too who knock everything short of perfection and won't support Democrats either. The fact is that because of this cynicism Democrats have not even been in power for 41 years and have not been able to fulfill their promises. We are in a death spiral. Getting out of it depends on people of all generations waking up and fighting against this neoliberal disaster.

I do endorse the Burke quote.