Kyrsten Synema (D - Az) brings a cake into the Senate to downvote min. wage hike

[pbrower2a]

(04-21-2021, 02:09 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(04-21-2021, 05:13 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: You misrepresent American history badly enough that I suspect malignancy.

Just check the Eisenhower-Obama overlay map to see how the Parties have changed hands. Democrats used to have the Southern white agrarian racists locked down as a reliable constituency. That is over. Oh, is that over! Eisenhower did extremely well among college graduates, and so did Obama.  

If Democrats have a connection to the old slave-owning planters then it is through those planters' ill-favored descendants: their slaves and the descendants of those slaves. There was much sowing of wild oats in the days of slavery, and when some comparatively-pale slave child appeared, then the slave-owner's family typically responded with 

"Who, me? Impossible. I am a good family man. That must have been some lonely merchant or other traveler."

American history began with a serious of tax revolts and the American Revolutionary war began with an attempt by the British to seize an arsenal and disarm the American population. Well, here we are again. The only difference is, the British of the time are the Democrats of today. As far as the Confederacy and it's connection to the Democratic party, the connection still exists today. It's slaves black then aren't slaves today. They may as well be, but they aren't today. The Democratic party of today still has a hold over the bulk of them (the descendants of the slaves) today. The hold the Democrats have is more psychological than physical and the plantations are no longer functional, apparent or visible these days. In short, the Democratic blacks aren't free or not as free as they should be because the Democratic party still has a hold over most of them. Like you, the Democratic blacks have no other choice but to go along with the Democratic party and whatever they do and whatever trouble or bind they get you in at this point. It's kind of sad but it is what it is and there's no turning back.

No, it was not a tax revolt as such. I know about the Boston Tea Party, which was about taxation without representation in the manner of levying taxes. The people of Boston had little problem with paying local taxes to defray local public expenditures (then meager, but such reflects the economic realities and technologies of the time). 

It may be far from a perfect analogy, but I see Donald Trump in much the same role as King George III. 

History is typically deeper than you understand it. What I find amazing about the American Revolution is how long the British colonies were placid about the British Crown having formal authority. In colonial times, the Crown largely had to leave the Colonies to their own means of meeting basic needs of government. The British Crown was too distant to micromanage things. Paradoxically, the Spanish Crown was more likely to have a viceroy in the Spanish colonies running things more tightly, which may have been more effective at suppressing revolts, typically with consummate brutality (see Tupac Amaru III)... but the Spanish had more revolts from large Native populations who chafed under repressive rule ill suited to their cultures. 

George III tried to tighten the screws in an effort to centralize his authority, and this violated a long-standing norm in the relationship between the King of England and the Colonies who knew that they were doing well enough as it was. Unlike the despotically-operated colonial rule in Spain (which in the long run would itself fail), the system in America had elected legislatures at the level of the colony. Note well: the General Court of Massachusetts (now the Massachusetts state legislature) dates from 1629 and is the oldest freely-elected legislature in the world. That legislature was founded only nine years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock.

Taking away the authority of the Massachusetts General Court or the Virginia House of Burgesses was a bad idea.  George III got plenty of warnings that such was a bad idea and failed to heed those warnings. Thus arose the American Revolution. 

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I have started a thread in a Forum not on this site, and if you want to look at some significant long term trends between states and their voting in elections, then by all means take a visit.   Political cultures within the states are much more stable than you might expect. 

Quote:When all is said and done, I think that the Obama and Eisenhower Presidencies are going to look like good analogues. Both Presidents are chilly rationalists. Both are practically scandal-free administrations. Both started with a troublesome war that both found their way out of. Neither did much to 'grow' the strength of their Parties in either House of Congress. To compare ISIS to Fidel Castro is completely unfair to Fidel Castro, a gentleman by contrast to ISIS. 

The definitive moderate Republican may have been Dwight Eisenhower, and I have heard plenty of Democrats praise the Eisenhower Presidency. He went along with Supreme Court rulings that outlawed segregationist practices, stayed clear of the McCarthy bandwagon, and let McCarthy implode.


 
gray -- did not vote in 1952 or 1956
white -- Eisenhower twice, Obama twice
deep blue -- Republican all four elections
light blue -- Republican all but 2012 (I assume that greater Omaha went for Ike twice)
light green -- Eisenhower once, Stevenson once, Obama never
dark green -- Stevenson twice, Obama never
pink -- Stevenson twice, Obama once 

No state voted Democratic all four times, so no state is in deep red. 

 The site to which I refer you does not pay much attention to the generational theory, although many posters therein recognize demographic trends.  Unlike here, where I would refer to both Obama and Eisenhower having similarities of character because both exemplify mature Reactive types as leaders. Despite their obvious dissimilarities of ethnic origin (at that nobody who has ever been President has ever been similar to Obama!) and that Eisenhower is the last President to have had General rank in the Armed Services. 

Mature Reactive types respect protocol, precedent, tradition, legal niceties, expertise, conventional morals, and formality.  This is in contrast to immature Reactive types who see those things as potential obstacles to getting their way. If you want to know what an immature Reactive is... 



well, here is about the most blatant example possible.  He was actually born a year before Eisenhower, and he became Chancellor of Germany at age  43, which is only four years younger than Obama when he became President of the United States. 

So what is so immature about Hitler? Lazy and stupid? He was neither. Holding firmly to stubborn desires and bigotry isn't particularly mature.  Attempts to micromanage in areas that are not in one's zone of expertise are immature. Ike deferred to the attorneys on law and Obama deferred to the experts on military matters and intelligence, which was wise for a soldier not an attorney and an attorney not a soldier. Both deferred to scientists, physicians,  and engineers on science, medicine, and engineering/ For Eisenhower or Obama reality exists and one accommodates it as much as necessary to change things that one can change. Hitler dispensed with protocol, precedent, tradition, legal niceties, expertise, conventional morals, and formality when those interfered with his desires, especially extermination of the Jews or expanding his slave empire. He demanded complete flunkies as subordinates, which explains such figures as Joachim von Ribbentrop as Foreign Minister and Wilhelm Keitel as the equivalent of Chief of the High Command. Hitler even got his nose into medicine.

... some states may be well suited to voting for a Mature Reactive due to their state cultures, and I defer the discussion of state cultures to David Hackett Fischer in Albion's Seed, which relates existing politics and culture to the cultures of the founders of locations.  Irish-Americans are a large part of America, but they have comparatively little to do with the formation of American political institutions. If they achieved great political power, it was because they took over institutions such as city governments that others (such as Puritans in New England or their descendants in upstate New York), the Dutch in Greater New York City, and the Quakers in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia established. Mexican-Americans may be doing much the same in much of the southwestern quadrant of the United States... even in a place like Dallas that did not exist in Mexican times or Denver, which was never part of Mexico.