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

[pbrower2a]

(01-05-2021, 04:30 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(01-05-2021, 12:15 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(01-04-2021, 02:31 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: I assume that you don't know that it is unconstitutional for a court to change state election laws. You have to be more careful about what you post that could make you look like a Nazi supporter. So, what did the Nazi's do after they were elected? Trump is going to push it to the limit which he has the legal right to do and you and Biden are going have to suck it up and accept it for now. As I recall, you had some Nazi's in your family right. I guess the apple doesn't fall from the tree. So, you must be OK with laws being broken by Democrats. That's good, you keep doing that and thinking that way because that's what we need to see more of by the Democrats.

I am angry with people like you now, classic. You just support fascism. Case closed. No, I will not allow Nazis on a forum about which I have any say.

I respect the US Constitution and recognize it as being the law of the land. You're the Nazi, Bolshevik supporter in the room dude. Your support of what they did is proof. You're support of the tech giants hooking up with the Democratic party and censoring information is proof too. You better ban yourself because you're the poster who is closest to being a Nazi like supporter here. PB's pretty close since he convicted himself. I checked your site the other day. I saw some familiar names that I haven't seen for years. I don't really have an interest in going back and repeating history. It looks like  it would a safe place for you guys  to ride out the storm that's coming.

First, it was regulations that were changed. All states have laws about the conduct of elections. One has no right to intimidate or physically bar people from voting, whether one is in law enforcement or in a private organization. If one is a public official one has no right to suspend mass transit necessary for getting people to the vote or closing parking facilities at a balloting place. The Civil Rights Act of 1965 largely delineates what state and local governments cannot do to shape voting through clever ways of keeping people that the officials dislike from voting. COVID-19 could be treated in electoral law as if it were an armed militia threatening prospective voters. It can be considered about as dangerous to life as a rattlesnake bite or even military combat. If human thugs have no right to interfere with a lawful vote, then the virus (SARS-2) has no more right than does the KKK.

Second, measures that make honest voting easier or electoral fraud more difficult are acceptable. If that means making absentee voting easier, then such is fine. If that means early voting in case something goes haywire on Election Day, then that too is fine. If it means that election officials find it easier to cancel a registration in one bailiwick after registering in another, then such is fine. If it means that states can design ballots that cannot be forged (watermarks are acceptable), prevents tampering with electoral devices or materials (which includes hacking) then such is fine. If it precludes interference with Parties' get-out-the-vote efforts then such is fine. Both Parties have sought to make electoral fraud much more difficult, and have typically seen fit to use methods analogous to those that Big Business uses to control cash and high-value assets under ownership. Such old jokes about "dead people voting" are now not only old but also obsolete. In my county the county clerks read the local obituaries to remove deceased people from the voting rolls. 

Third, comparison of either Eric or me to Nazis is absurd. Both of us have shown consistent disdain for authoritarian and totalitarian regimes because authoritarian and totalitarian regimes debase what makes life human. I see part of the fault in American capitalism in the reduction of the number of capitalists and not capitalism itself. I would like to see the tax laws changed to promote family farms instead of farm consolidation and to promote mom-and-pop capitalism instead of monopolized, vertically-integrated businesses. We need more capitalists and not fewer if capitalism is to have any decency whatsoever. 

Even Karl Marx admitted that capitalism had promoted greater equity, technological progress, and greater overall prosperity than the feudal way of life that it supplanted. When capitalism sponsors human progress, then we can reasonably go along with it. When it promotes elitism, power of the system over workers, and mass poverty we need to change it. Business structures that promote bureaucratic power to keep most people poor, buy the political process, limit opportunity to existing elites of ownership and administration, suppress competition, and thwart technological progress  deserve to break. Much of the nastiness of the current Crisis is that giant businesses with bloated bureaucracies that have been more effective at keeping their employees poor and stifling competition have become too inefficient to remain profitable. Know well: bureaucracies are good for controlling things but almost never turn a profit. I have a thread on the lifecycle of business, and the end of the line for many businesses is that they are better at dictating the behavior of employees and customers than at turning a profit but need to borrow more and more just to stay afloat while no longer in any semblance of a growth phase. Much of the fault with American capitalism (and, yes, right-wing pols have intensified what is wrong with American capitalism) is that America has too little capitalism and too much bureaucracy.

I would think this the test of whether one believes in capitalism or does not: should people get rich in significant numbers by means other than ownership of business? Of course I recognize that such people as film stars, pop musicians, professional athletes, highly-successful professionals, and creative artists can get filthy rich. I see a big problem with people getting filthy rich as corporate bureaucrats and political hucksters for treating people badly or scamming people. Obviously the free-market system says that someone so  unique as Steve Trout is going to get filthy rich while someone struggling along in AA ball at age 27 with no chance of making it to "the Show" might as well consider making a living driving a truck or working in a warehouse if one has near-average intelligence or delivering mail or going into accountancy if one has above-average intelligence. If one is not so special one cannot expect the market to favor one making an average income except as a worker. Evidence of the validity of a capitalist system is, paradoxically, that practically nobody gets rich except as a capitalist. Successful creative people are at least capitalists of ideas and content and high-level professionals are capitalists at competence.  I am more orthodox in my support of capitalism except for one thing: we will need a welfare state just to ensure that people can participate more fully in a well-oiled economic machine. 

As for the contention that I in any way sympathize with Nazis... like most people with significant German origin I have mixed feelings about Germany. In essence, Bach, Schiller, Goethe, Diesel, Benz, and Adenauer are wonderful... and everything Nazi is horrible. In that I am like many Italian-Americans in trying to connect to Petrarch, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Verdi, Garibaldi, and Puccini while despising Mussolini's fascists and any Mafia-like cliques. Most Italian-Americans prefer to be connected to the sorts of characters in Moonstruck than in Goodfellas. But back to the disdain that most German-Americans have for Nazis: many of us recognize a political tendency that has little connection to German culture but has plenty of German-Americans in it, whether the KKK or other lunatic-fringe groups such as Boogaloo Bois or the Proud Boys as Nazi-like. 

I hate antisemitism. I come from an antisemitic family, and one of the ironies is that the more that I got to know "the Enemy" and the more that I connected to my German heritage the more I came to the conclusion that the Ashkenazi Jews are my moral and cultural brethren. If I had to choose between becoming a Jew and becoming a Nazi I would become a Jew. Maybe I might not fit into the Hasidic world, but I wouldn't fit well into another very-German world, that of the Old-Order Amish, either. I have come to recognize that much that is German is the result of Jewish contributions to science, culture, and academia. I also recognize that much the same holds for America. When it comes to religion... if one wants to fully understand what the Old Testament says, then ask an expert -- and the Jews have studied this for over two thousand years. Christian seminaries intended to churn out preachers often have Jews on their faculty for this reason. American theater is often for all practical purposes Yiddish theater done in English... and English is one of the closest languages to Yiddish. American cinema is heavily Jewish in composition, and it was especially so in the Golden Age when the studio bosses were largely Jewish. The Jewish studio bosses made sure that the cinematic product was highly-accessible, of high quality, and in tune with overall morality. As an example, Jewish writers and directors even created a stock hero -- the Roman Catholic priest! -- as a conduit for promoting moral behavior. Well, the audience for the movies included more Roman Catholics than anything else, and a rabbi wouldn't be so effective, would he? Above all, much that I consider German or Austrian but universal in desirable is Jewish. One can't have modern physics without Albert Einstein, or film music without Bernard Herrmann or Erich Korngold. Sigmund Freud is inextricable from modern thought, and the repertory of classical music would be far poorer without Mendelssohn, Mahler, Schoenberg, Copland, Gershwin, and Ligeti. If I am not an obvious relative of Jews (I have no known and identifiable Jewish ancestry) I relate well to German-Jewish and Jewish-American culture. What my antisemitic family did was to make me curious about Jews and Judaism, and the more that I see of it the more that I appreciate them. 

Here's a kicker: among the non-blacks involved in the Civil Rights struggle for African-Americans, a vastly disproportionate share were Jewish. I can hardly imagine a much more admirable cause. Human dignity is for us all (maybe such scum as pedophiles and garden-variety criminals excepted) serve us all.

The connection to Nazis that I have is one that I assume: sharing ancestors.   I consistently denounce Nazis. If I had to choose between converting to Judaism and joining a Nazi-like group.. well I risk repeating myself. Judaism is about as pure morality as one can find in any religion; after all Jews have had about a thousand more years for refining their religion than Christians have had. I will pass on the Crusades against the Albigensians and the non-Catholic peoples of the Levant, the persecution of Hussites and Mennonites, and the Inquisition. "Christian" defenses of slavery and the mistreatment of American First Peoples are sick jokes at best. I come to recognize that Judaism did nothing of this. Jews never persecuted my Quaker, Huguenot, and Mennonite ancestors -- and should I prove to have Hussite ancestors, the Jews never persecuted them.    

If you want to put me into some political box -- in some other country I might best fit a "Christian social" Party.  People like me recognize the need for a strong market system and widespread prosperity and a welfare state to ensure human dignity for all... and solid Constitutional protection of human rights. That includes of course law and order without which all enumerated human rights as in the Bill of Rights (US) or the Rights of Man (France) become meaningless.