Let's make fun of Trump, bash him, etc. while we can!

[pbrower2a]

(01-24-2019, 04:06 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(01-24-2019, 03:44 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(01-24-2019, 01:35 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: The American Left was also opposed to the Soviet Union and its Communist system. Before the sixties and the end of the Vietnam War, it was the Democrats who waged actual war on them. Meanwhile, the Republicans like McCarthy and Nixon spent most of their "anti-communist" energy on taking away our basic rights that Americans hold dear, and resisting the movements to expand those rights.

Here is what the Left says about America and the totalitarian systems:





The Republicans have opposed the rights of Americans. Trump tries to suppress our rights. But we on the Left are not going to let them turn us around.

The Republicans are only concerned with property rights and lower taxes, and about suppression of the immigrants and lower classes whom they blame for the economic pressures that affect them, and about opposing the government that seeks to make the economy fair to everyone, rather than only to that .01% of the people that Trump and the Republicans are concerned to protect. The Democrats protect union rights, and Republicans oppose them, so workers are still in the right camp if they are Democrats. The Democrats enforced immigration laws already; Trump's campaign against immigrants was merely a campaign gimmick to appeal to your mis-directed fear and anger, and it works on that level. A fair immigration system would protect rights and work well for all; the Republicans in the House stopped it from happening.

The 99% approach always works, and the 1% trickle-down Republican Reaganoid system never does. The 99% approach only seeks equal opportunity for all. It is opposed to a Communist system that would take all property rights and all other rights away, and vest them in an oligarchic elite of political operatives. That system does not work well for the people either. It may protect equality for most of the people, including gender equality, and sometimes ethnic equality (but often deliberate ethnic oppression), but it is equality at a low level.

Greens, Democrats and progressives are true Americans. Those who protect the rights of a few to exploit the many are not. A fair system that makes sure that people get a fair wage for their work, and that people are protected against the frequent capricious and destructive behavior by capitalist pigs, is not a Communist system. It is a mixed system that protects our ability to engage in free enterprise and to have equal opportunity.

In my opinion, there is a difference between the American left and the old left or far left that you represent. As I've said, the America right has already made its decision and the American Left is now positioned as having to make a decision as to which direction/system is best suited for them and their future generations.

But I don't think you understand what people on the left such as myself, David or P.Brower represent. You keep calling us communists, or say that what we advocate is communism, and that we are not Americans. As long as you do this, you are not capable of discerning what anyone on the Left thinks. There are differences among the Left and the Center-Left, to be sure, but the line is very fluid, and the moderates still have an electoral advantage, although this could shift in the next decade.

Marx made clear that communism was a certainty as the result of economic and social progress as well as technological advancement.  He saw progress from the capitalist order that he knew (basically, the early, or Gilded-Age capitalism) to socialism (with a revolutionary elite toppling leaders beholden to the capitalist class and taking over ownership of the productive economy on behalf or the working class/proletariat, bringing faster progress because they would eliminate the exploitation of capitalism that manifests itself in elite indulgence that itself devours capital that might better be invested in industrial progress), and bringing about communism as an age without scarcity and political or economic command. 

Marx could not see that the capitalist class would choose to establish a consumer economy that transforms the proletariat from a sullen mass of exploited toilers who hate the capitalists who exploit them like planters exploited slaves into consumers who actually bought most of the products of their toil. The worker who dwells in a ramshackle hovel or a fire-trap flat, who sees his children die of hunger or hunger-rushed diseases, knows that he will be beaten if he strikes for better pay or working conditions, has no meaningful vote, who fears an industrial accident or violent crime that will cause the starvation of his family, and who knows of elite indulgence is the sort whom revolutionaries can rile with the words "Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!" The worker who has a sanitary dwelling, whose kids go to school instead of being pressed into industrial labor at a tender age, who owns a car, who has a house or at least a sanitary apartment with furniture,and appliances, wears clothes that are not rags, witnesses the police arresting violent criminals instead of strikers, and can vote for politicians receptive to his economic interests has far more than chains to lose.

The problem is that we may have gone as far as we can with the consumer society as is possible. Do we go backward to the norms of the Gilded Age of early capitalism? Do we go toward Marxist socialism? Do we push on with a consumer society that pushes people to consume to pointless excess that degrades the human environment? Or do we skip Marxist socialism and end up with the communist dream of a world without scarcity?

Not one of those solutions work. The first necessitates fascism, Nazism, or Ku Kluxism.  I have my idea of what a Klan-dominated America would look like -- and it would be much like Nazi Germany, complete with torture chambers and concentration camps. Marxism-Leninism did not fit American culture except where Americans brought Marxist ideas over from Russia, and still does not. I see people downsizing so that they can simplify their lives. A world without scarcity? Nobody has a practical idea on how that works. Most people still have nothing to sell but their toil.

So much for political theory.

Quote:I suspect many on the Right and the Left alike are firm in a lot of their opinions. Right now those who lean left have about a 51 to 45% lead in opinion polls on various issues and approval/disapproval polls. There is some variation in this, of course. But our hope on the Left is that this lead will grow a bit over the next few years, and that it will be enough to overcome the systemic advantage that you guys on the right have through voter suppression, gerrymandering, the electoral college, the senate, the money in politics, the supreme court, etc. 

America is still split about 45-10-45 between the Left, the Center, and the Right. We have not seen an electoral blowout since the 1980s in the popular vote. The elder Bush may have won the Electoral College 426-111 in 1988, but that was with about the same percentage of the popular vote as Obama in 2008 (about 53-46 both times). Should there be an electoral blowout in 2020 (which will happen if Trump support is as hideous as I see now or is even close to that in 2020), then Trump the loss will not reflect so much the failure of conservatism as it will be the inability of Trump to fit conservative values. It is far too early to predict how independent or third-Party nominees (who might be more orthodox conservatives than Trump) will fare. It could also be that President Trump is seen as unusually corrupt and incompetent, which is not good for political survival in a country split
nearly down the middle.

I am convinced that orthodox conservatism will emerge anew no matter who wins the 2020 Presidential election even if we have a political realignment such as the one in 1930 and 1932. Democrats could go too far and too fast in anti-capitalist measures; remember well that the Tea Party pols won big because the Hard Right funded those pols well. The Hard Right wanted an absolute plutocracy once and for all in America and came close to achieving such. For some people, no human suffering can ever be in excess so long as it turns, indulges, enhances, or enforces a profit. This said, strip conservatism of cronyism, corruption, and cruelty and one might have another Dwight Eisenhower, a conservative version of Barack Obama. 

Quote:If we can have a winning streak in elections, then the right wing will shrink and gradually disappear amid the success of the country and the government. If the Left starts to win elections, it will be up to you guys whether to rebel over guns and/or taxes or immigrants, etc., and whether to do it violently. If the Left fails in the coming election years, then the country will decline, and some will exercize the option to move away. The Left historically has not been able to win a revolution unless it is well-organized with state and foreign help. That is also true on the Right. 

How big is a streak?

In 2009, Democrats saw Obama as the ideal President, the sort who would inspire Americans to major reforms and benign change. In 2016 America effectively voted for a return to the values of the Gilded Age or at least the Harding-Coolidge-Hoover "New Era" in which Capital was King and labor got what Big Business saw fit to offer (basically as little as it could get away with). Perhaps it is all the worse now because Big Business has heirs devoid of empathy and because the bureaucratic elites of our time cultivate narcissism among themselves as a supposed (if obviously perverse to most of us) virtue.

It took a three-year economic meltdown that ravaged America's economic elites and created niches for new capitalists who could start up new businesses in the wake of such a meltdown. Inventories, property, and labor was cheap. Customers were loyal, often making their economic decisions based on a relative working at a place.  So you have a relative working at Kroger? You might just get your groceries at Kroger to help your nephew keep his job. If at some mom-and-pop grocery, you might get your groceries at that mom-and-pop grocery.

Quote:But I suspect the Left will not be the ones to organize such a successful revolution. We will just keep plugging away while right-wing rule ruins the country, in hopes the younger people will wake up. The more your side wins, the greater the decline our country will face. I suspect it will become quite a steep decline in short order, and fueled by climate change.

Today's young adults are hostile to Donald Trump and every vice for which he stands. I approve of such.