Presidential election, 2016

[Classic-Xer]

(11-18-2016, 04:35 PM)taramarie Wrote:

(11-18-2016, 07:31 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(11-18-2016, 06:40 AM)taramarie Wrote:

(11-18-2016, 06:25 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(11-17-2016, 11:51 PM)taramarie Wrote: I am just going to leave this right here.

You want to build bridges you have to cease identity politics and labeling.
It is about engagement and part of that is dropping stereotype at the door and listening. Then you know the person more and what the core issues are. THEN you can discuss.

Should be the top video. Sorry I found this interview on fb. If not it is the video that has "Its about engagement" at the top.

Its about engagement

But identity politics is nearly a surrogate for ideology in a country so polarized between center-left and Hard Right. It's who gets the goodies and who gets the shaft. For the next four years, the well-connected Right will get the rewards and everyone else will get taxed to support those rewards..

At the worst, consider (if without the serial mass murders of Saddam Hussein) Iraq under Saddam Hussein. If one was in the right side of the regime one could live up to standards characteristic of at least southern Europe. If not one was living under standards characteristic of India (except with great fear). Government worked for one or made life miserable in what proved an Apartheid system (Christians and non-Kurdish Sunni Muslims OK, Shiites and Kurds not OK).

It's patronage or punishment. It looks as if Donald Trump will be a big-government Republican, using the Treasury to reward those to whom he made the biggest promises but cutting off government services that he can get away with cutting off aid to everyone else. That happened on a smaller scale with the younger Bush.

Those who defend it feed the problem.

People defend it to protect themselves or to get questionable benefits that come from hurting others even worse.  Really, if I defend any it is people not of my demographic (non-white, non-Anglo, non-Christian members of the American middle class who stand to be burned by what looks like a White Power government. I have no loyalty to the White Race, an entity that has never needed help in American history... but has done great harm to people other than itself (mistreatment of First Peoples, Jim Crow practice).

Yes, white working people have done badly due to de-industrialization and the weakening of labor unions. Of course, people left behind develop their own  tribal loyalties while others who leave the 'tribe' either abandon or fail to maintain loyalties to the tribe.

So what can we do for miners and industrial workers whose opportunities are best described as increasingly-intense competition for fewer, and less-remunerative spots? Maybe for wages  to fall even faster than the decline in opportunities while subsidizing failing or dying industries? Donald trump has promised to bring back coal mining to its old economic glory... all I expect is for him to throw subsidies at coal barons.  I'm guessing that that is how Donald Trump and the far-right Republican Party does things.

"I must say to my people who stand on the worn threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity
and discipline. must not allow our crea­tive protests to degenerate
into physical violence." "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." MLK.

I think that applies to today but for everyone regardless of what colour, sex or belief we have. Stop what divides us.

You're seeing what happens and witnessing the negative results when there's a major divide/difference/gap that exists between the level of character or the content of ones character. I consider myself to have a fairly high level of character and I prefer to hang out and socialize with those who have higher levels of character. I'll drop down a few notches in character in order to directly and effectively engage with certain progressives on an equal playing field.