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

[Classic-Xer]

(02-08-2022, 01:44 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(02-07-2022, 09:59 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(02-07-2022, 02:26 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Add to that: the right-wingers who want an America that endorses plutocracy and the cultural values of Christian fundamentalism are, as a whole, aging. Retailers and restaurants whose clientele is old tend to go under if they cannot replace their elderly customers who might have been a lucrative clientele in recent years. 

In a town of 10,000 near me both the Ruby Tuesday and the Bob Evans restaurant closed. Both have "old" customer bases.

... Conservatism will not die once and for all, but Gingrich/Trump-era conservatism can. Gingrich-era conservatism offers much for too few people and privation for the rest of us. We're getting the message. Trump-style conservatism lacks the sorts of characteristics that one associates with what I considered a sustainable conservatism of the 1970's... a limited role for government in subsidies and give-aways, promotion of small business, respect for tradition (OK, we have multiple traditions in America, and all of them are just as valid if they apply to the most credible people in their groups), rule of law, protocol and precedent, and respect for domestic tranquility. Class privilege is sustainable only if the economic elites can enforce deference through either outright terror (He who has the guns makes the rules) or economic subjection (He who owns the gold makes the rules).  It is impossible to connect Donald Trump to Edmund Burke. It is possible to imagine a new sort of conservatism emerging around 2030, one that rejects demagoguery and promotes individual responsibility.  

Is the "Blue" world wonderful? No. Much of it is so overpriced that one cannot live there except to endure Third-World living conditions (twelve in one room in AH-MAY-REEK-CAW!) in housing. Maybe we will need to put up with Japanese-style or South Korean-style housing densities if we are to have the American population concentrated along the coasts as is so in Australia because the "Heartland" is an economic desert in the sense that the Outback is a climatic desert with far too little opportunity. Maybe we need to shore up the economy in places like Ohio and Upstate New York that used to have excellent opportunity for people with modest education and a good work ethic who did factory work so that people aren't obliged to take chances with homelessness to avoid sure hopelessness. Obviously space per capital in urban areas must be significantly less with a population of 350 million than with a population of 175 million. There are no more orange groves in southern California to transform into subdivisions; fifty years later, those subdivisions are often slums. (A hint to the wise: unless the adult female is a Tiger Mom who can successfully get her kids to buck the anti-intellectual trends in America so that they can matriculate and do well in the excellent University of California system, stay clear of California).

The priority of the economic elites of America is to ensure that everything works for their own sybaritic excess at great human cost to everyone else. If I had to think of a way to waste every blessing that America has ever had, I could hardly imagine worse except for thermonuclear war. 

Oh, by the way, Classic X'er... what do you think of the epidemic of meth and opiates in the "Real America" that you so love?

I can see that the Bush/McCain/Romney era conservatism or compassionate conservatism is obviously on its way out. Liberalism or bleeding heart liberalism as you knew it, is currently on its way out too. Who is more likely to end up a meth head, a poor Democratic kid/grand kid stuck in Blue Podunk or a Republican voters kid/grand kid? Think about it. My parents old home town is more like Blue Podunk today. I wish we had more border agents and a fully completed  chunk of border wall to stem the illegal  flow of Chinese Fentanyl instead of border agents processing, releasing and transporting illegal immigrants all over the country. Do you have any idea, aren't you able to see (it's very obvious to everyone else) how trouble you guys are getting yourselves into these days. It's 4T dude, traitors (people who betray their country (Betray their fellow country men/citizens}can be rounded up and executed on the spot or assassinated during 4T's. It's up to you dude, I don't give a shit about you. You must know that/figured that out by now.

Considering that you traffic in rigid, unflattering stereotypes of people who fail to fit your norm and your pugnacious enmity toward such people, I would not want to face you if you had the power of life and death over people whom you hold in disdain. 

Most of the isolated rural areas (the Podunk as you call them) are strongly R and are the most fervent areas for R voting, especially in the Trump era...  unless they are majority-minority. Fentanyl is very bad stuff suited only to people with a limited life expectancy due to a terminal condition such as cancer or congestive heart failure. It's bad, but the pain that it suppresses is even worse. Where it comes from, whether from foreign smugglers or from pilfered patches, matters little. Border walls do nothing to stop "air freight" by smugglers who get through Customs, deliver a parcel to a safe house, and return whence they came. As for illegal aliens -- one of the surest ways to be deported is to be put through the process of the legal system. Illegal aliens get deported for minor drug offenses, DUI, shoplifting, and domestic abuse. They find the welfare system hard to latch onto, and if they make statements of verifiable falsehood they can be busted and deported. 

If I were to give advice to illegal aliens seeking to avoid deportation I would counsel them to

(1) learn English
(2) stick to low-visibility jobs (in a restaurant, work in the kitchen and don't be a waiter)
(3) do nothing that reeks of illegality 
(4) avoid fights
(5) avoid welfare and credit
(6) assimilate into a community of people culturally similar. 

We liberals are in deep trouble irrespective of much else should America become a fascistic society to the extent that we lack the means of escape, aren't willing to liquidate everything that we have for pennies on the grand, and be fussy about where we would go. You do not understand how miserable your life could be under fascistic rule because you will see friends and families disappear into the perverse legal legal system and come back broken; if you aren't enthusiastic enough about what the canned ideology you risk legal scrutiny. People will denounce you fraudulently just to get your job or to get your home at a fire-sale price without the smell of smoke. Most people will be obliged to work much harder for less, and if you think that management is brutal these days just wait until you see what fascism does to labor-management relations. They will look more like master-slave relations as they became in Nazi Germany. 

Remember: fascism is an ideology tailor-made for sociopaths and rapacious elites who have no qualms about inflicting suffering on others.   Yes, this is a 4T, but even I can see signs of its end. Two participants in the Michigan plot have chosen to plea bargain to do lesser time in prison than they might if they were to face criminal trials. The investigation of the Capitol Putsch has so far gotten lots of small fry -- but some of those small fry have been singing like canaries. The investigation is going after the bigger fish who risk longer terms of imprisonment and economic ruin. Some may even be in Congress as we speak.   

The difference between a 4T and a 1T is that in a 1T, new rules are set rigidly and everyone knows them. People may have some choice on how they comply, but the rules are there. Political violence is out of the question in a 1T. Fair play is one reliable way to avoid trouble. There is far less privacy for deviant behavior that stick out for violating key rules (such as making and keeping notes of meetings that discuss substantive matters. Economic inequality becomes much less severe (that has yet to happen), so anyone who acts as a Big Shot, High Roller, or Big Spender who has less-than-impressive means becomes suspect. Maybe if one is simply wasting an inheritance one can get away with buying a car beyond your obvious means. Community revives where it was recently weak. People in some dreary Podunk learn to make the best of Podunk (yes, one can attend ice-cream socials, watch high-school sports, participate in civic and service groups, and of course attend religious services and prayer meetings. That's how small-town life was in the 1950's and 1960's before people got high-fallutin' ideas that they could make the world a better place by taking some Voyage to the Interior. 

The world will be better when kids are involved in Scouting, Boys' and Girls' Clubs, 4-H, FFA, Job's Daughters or the Order of De Molay. and church-related youth groups instead of simply hanging out in meaningless activities.  We have plenty of Elk's Clubs, Moose Lodges, Y's, American Legions, Masonic Lodges, and VFW halls. One thing that I have noticed over sixty years is that people who have the narrowest range of geographic activities find the greatest depth in human interactions. Maybe making the best out of Podunk is better for us all than going to the Big City to go 'where the action is'.  Add to this -- maybe people can invest time and effort into making gardens grow instead of wasting time at the shopping mall and becoming addled on video games and banal interactions on computers. 

Dreary as things are due to an economic system that enriches elites while keeping most people broke, a recent ramping-up of political extremism and violence, decay of adult manners (especially among middle-aged and older people), international stresses, and a plague known as COVID-19 stalking us all, I can see a better world. It won't quite be like the 1950's; Jim Crow is gone once and for all, LGBT rights are well entrenched, and the technological progress and infrastructure built in the 1950's and later is either intact or heavily improved.  We are entering an age in which rational thought is expected even among dullards and conspiracy theories have lost their sting. 

The rules will be in place, and one of them will be that extremism of any kind will be in deep contempt.

I've learned just about everything I know about the Left from those on the Left over the years.  What did I tell you about going along with Left Wing stereotypes the other day? What have I told will happen to you if you continue going along with them and continue to traffic them? How many Nazi believers/supporters died during World War II? How many Bolshevik believers/supporters died during World War II? Millions of them on both sides? How many ordinary people (mainly peasants) were either killed by the Bolsheviks or killed by the Bolsheviks polices after World War II? Millions more of them? How many Americans cared as it was all going on?

Is Jim Crow gone forever? How many black/minority groups on the Democratic side openly support segregationist policies and how many are openly engaged in acts associated with segregation today?