(09-05-2022, 03:52 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:(09-04-2022, 09:50 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: We may not "need" them to go along. If they want to continue to rebel, then they will continue to be put down if they do it violently, and I hope defeated at the polls if they don't. But admittedly, as I have said, conservatives can make a comeback in 1Ts, we all know that. I suspect a moderate Republican, at least, may have a chance to win in 2032 or 2036, especially if this person is Spencer Cox or even Ivanka Trump.My comment on Trump was not about his effectiveness (although he did bring a considerable of manufacturing jobs back with him), but that he saw the strategic need to appeal people from across the isle.
Donald Trump deceived people to think he was interested in poor liberals who needed manufacturing jobs. They were no longer liberals if they voted for Trump, because Trump was just making promises of outcomes; what he proposed about how to accomplish this was just more Republican neoliberalism.
Quote:Democrats will need the votes of moderates, though. We'll need enough of them to realize that democracy is better than the tyranny and corruption that Trump offers, and that Biden stands up against-- and for reform to strengthen democracy, as he explained in one of his speeches here. He also mentioned in this speech how not a single Republican supported him in this. Republicans today may be conservatives, but they are not moderates. None of them are; none of them in congress at least, and not in many other places today. They are merely different degrees of conservative, and mostly extreme right.
If you want someone to "stand against tyranny", a lifelong establishment shill is not your guy.
He is obviously not as much a lifelong shill as his dreadful predecessor. As a pattern, it's the Establishment types who accomplish lasting change because they know how to cut the deals. A would-be tyrant like Donald Trump gives my-way-or-the-highway speeches, and in this country he fails to get the necessary respect. At some point the good politicians in democratic societies have learned that they must give something to get something. Basically, your pet highway project in Michigan comes with similar projects in other states, or your road is simply a line on the map.
Note well that people are living much longer than they used to, in part because
1. People are not smoking as much as they used to, smoking-related diseases taking out huge parts of the life expectancy of millions of people until rather recently. That partially explains the much-longer stay of the GI and Silent in public life than that of the Lost. Just think of Humphrey Bogart (1899-1957), for whom smoking and raspy (smoking-created) were signatures of his character and persona in his movies; he died at age 57 of lung cancer, presumably from smoking. Cancerweed has become less of a part of the lives of Americans rather steadily since the 1960's. Today, actors need not smoke and we do not miss that.
2. People are drinking less. Crackdowns on DUI have scared people out of having "one for the road" as once a common expression and now rare. We still have no shortage of alcoholics, but even those are drinking less, and getting a longer life expectancy from lesser levels of alcohol-related diseases. We are also having far fewer fatalities from vehicle crashes, also statistically lengthening lives.
3. Beginning with the GI Generation, older people have remained intellectually and physically active, and connected with others longer. This is essential to preventing depression and keeping people motivated to do things that give them cause to stay alive.
Now one thing personal. People can remain active and involved into their eighties as never before. A pattern that has begun with the GI Generation has entrenched itself, resulting in far more people living into their eighties. People are not simply going into the nursing home in their sixties and floundering along in poor health into their sixties; people generally don't last long in nursing homes. The Lost used to be incarcerated in such places early when (very often) they could not cope with the rapid changes in American life.
Joe Biden looks the part to stick around into his eighties. Just take a good look at him. He seems to have never been obese. Obesity is another life-shortening bad habit.
Statistically, good habits are typically the difference in life expectancy of differing groups of people. Just contrast Joe Biden to Donald Trump, and it is Donald Trump who seems more likely to die soon. Obesity, little physical activity other than cheating in his golf game in which he gets around by a golf cart, having been exposed to just about every STD possible due to his life of whoring, having a dreadful diet, being under legal scrutiny, and having a life practically immune to any intellectual 'corruption', he looks like someone who would be put away in a nursing home if he didn't have 24-7 household care... or death warmed-over. Donald Trump is a prime candidate for a stroke or heart attack.
Joe Biden is Establishment, and Trump is the definitive Outsider in political life. Joe Biden appeals to people who think that the government can do some good, and Trump appeals to people who trust in little. (Indeed, like a typical con man, Trump caters his pitch to people who distrust formal learning, mainstream politics, and even normal business. He makes it more personal, more of flattery than anything else, only to make the fleece. As in business, so in politics, and he has been more successful in the business of political demagoguery than someone like Barack Obama, who is a model of how to be President.
In my experience, the more effective solutions in politics come from Establishment types and not from demagogues. President Biden is doing at age 79 what many politicians have done in their 50's. How long can he get away with that? Ask Eric, who does elaborate horoscopes if you want some answer. I'm not sure that his horoscopes predict death or debility. If he did and those were reliable he would be in the employ of insurance companies in their underwriting divisions or some well-paid contractor.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.