10-15-2022, 11:32 AM
(10-13-2022, 05:01 PM)David Horn Wrote:(10-06-2022, 04:42 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: I dunno, how sane is it to continue supporting, promoting and trying to elect someone (Biden) who was/is showing obvious signs of dementia, carelessness and incompetence?
Except for the minor fact that he's had an immensely productive first 21 months. You may hate what he's done, but you can't deny that he has ... even snookering Mitch McConnell on the infrastructure bill.
Note: He's not my first choice either. The elderly should not be setting policy for the 90+% of the much younger members of the citizenry. It's just wroong! But a choice of cogger Biden v cogger Trump: no problem going for Biden. I suspect neither will actually run in 2024; Trump may even be a convict by then. But Biden would be wise to rest on his well-deserved laurels and spend the rest of his life traveling.
His effectiveness as President will matter greatly. Even should the Republicans win both Houses of Congress they will at most achieve gridlock, and the extreme positions that the GOP takes in Congress will be thwarted. So far as I can tell the GOP agenda is to establish a pure plutocracy favoring the well-connected. Vetoes of polarizing legislation that has bare majorities in both Houses of Congress can give the President some credibility against a wayward Congress.
The Dark Money forces typically appeal to visceral fears such as crime, "Defund the police!" and "Let drag-queens influence our kids!" being commonplace smears of Democrats. I have seen this in political ads in at least four states recently (Michigan, Iowa, Illinois, and Wisconsin). Should I watch local TV in Indiana or Ohio in the next week or so I will tell you whether I see much the same. The TV markets in question are Grand Rapids-Kalamazoo, Michigan's Upper Peninsula, Madison, and the Quad Cities).
Don't fool yourself. Much of our political distress comes from the ability of Big Business to get from the federal and state governments what they cannot get through free markets, whether because the government gets in the way (regulations to protect the environment or workplace safety) or through crony capitalism.
We are 4T, and COVID-19 kills like the worst wars in American history and causes economic disruption. Many Americans have been doing their civic duty just to get the appropriate COVID and flu shots. The collapse of neoliberal assumptions about economic roles ensures inflation, as the old trick of price stability (make sure that people contribute to the economy while getting little from it) falters. Maybe neoliberal policies of the Reagan era did not so much end inflation of the 1970's as it stalled it with economic insecurity and harsh management that would eventually come to an end.
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.