Who else would like politics to be humdrum?

[Eric the Green]

(02-15-2022, 12:55 AM)JasonBlack Wrote: imo, Trump's biggest sin was being kind of a dick on twitter. A few items on his civil rights record were unacceptable (ex: trans military ban. wtf....), and his spending was abhorrently high even before the 'rona, but as far as tangible damages are concerned, Woodrow Wilson, Andrew Jackson all rank as much, much worse than Trump when you look at policy rather than just rhetoric. Of those three, the only one I can say something redeeming about is FDR, who, in spite of policies which could only be called evil, played his social role well as the self-assured patriarch who kept everyone's spirits strong through a crisis.

Ha ha, I wish! Welcome to T4T forum, but we are adversaries according to this post of yours.

Trump was a dick in his policies; his twitter remarks mean nothing by comparison. Trump and GW Bush were the worst ever on policy, and that's what counts. Trump unleashed total war on the environment from which we may never recover. Whoever ignores climate breakdown and the urgent need to force businesses to change their products is fiddling while the USA burns and floods away. Such attitudes are unacceptable in my opinion. They are symptoms of the fact that willingness to take needed action by a government has been brainwashed out of the people by 40 years of Reaganomics. Next to Bush and Trump, Reagan was the worst president ever. Trump just continued his absurd tax breaks and deregulation and kept inequality and racism going. His was a government of, by and for the billionaire class only, and a growing tyranny and total assault on democracy and a war on truth, built on demagogic appeals to himself as the only man who can fix things; a would-be Mussolini. As for FDR, Wilson and Jackson, it's a mixed bag I admit, but those who criticize them might be criticizing what they did right; it all depends. FDR was the best of a bad lot (along with Lincoln probably) among US presidents. He did some evil, but I wonder if what you are calling his evil decisions, are what I would choose to call his evil decisions. You seem to be a free-market conservative, a stance with which I disagree.

Quote:tbh, that's really what we need now. There is a shortage of true patriarchal figures in the west. Conservative men today are mostly rebellious bad boy types, internet trolls or business types who are too libertarian to want to lead much. As for women or liberal men...no, that's just nonsense. A patriarch needs to have intense conviction, but combined with self-restraint and external calm, less "macho" and more severe. We're talking more the Charlton Heston "speak softly and carry a big stick" kind of strength (think Charlton Heston or Liam Neeson, with a touch more aggressive edge) Ironically, it was the socially conservative GIs, a generation which produced patriarchs in abundance, which did the most to undermine raising strong, well-adjusted men with dawn of the welfare state in the 60s: an era that also sparked widespread births out of wedlock, crime, fatherless homes and child poverty even as overall income inequality was at low points (the boomers are also partly to blame here. They really acted a fool and screwed up a lot for the then-child Gen Xers).

Nah, we don't need Patriarchy anymore. Women are much wiser rulers, as we can see in history. We need more women in charge, as Obama said. We needed Hillary Clinton, not Donald big daddy Trump. He examplified everything wrong with patriarchy; sole interest in money and abuse of women. 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.

We don't need men shoving their weight around and dominating an abused and restricted wife and children seen but not heard in stupid and unhistorical un-traditional alienated suburban nuclear families that limit human potential for caring and have only an economic purpose and the desire to keep women and children restricted and narrow-minded and a community culturally impoverished and lonely.

And the welfare state was what we needed; not the neoliberal trampling of peoples government in favor business abuse of the people unleashed by Reagan for no reason whatever, which has created horrific and unnecessary income inequality, the resulting social problems and lack of health care, and economic stagnation for young people today. Welfare scapegoating was never correct, and never to blame for family breakdown. This was largely due to destruction and neglect in black communities and a youth culture of disregard for education. 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.

Quote:This is the biggest reason I'm fairly pessimistic about this crisis. We've failed to teach boys to be men over several generations, to the point where mature masculinity is unrecognized at best and vilified at worst. Feminism doesn't last through crises, but when they cave and turn to men to rescue them, the men won't know how. They were never either properly instructed, nor offered any rewards or respect for being so, and as a result, I have my doubts that they will be able to properly wield real authority when it is most needed.

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?

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.