Presidential election, 2016

[pbrower2a]

(12-04-2016, 12:08 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(12-04-2016, 11:13 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(12-04-2016, 10:14 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: The problem is that they don't understand it themselves.  Most of them believe their own side's propaganda, rather than understanding it's about dictatorship of the urban majority over the hinterlands, all in the cause of the blue urban elites.

You started out good, saying each side is into their own propaganda.  You then pushed your own side's propaganda without thinking from the other perspective.

Bush 43 was tagged with the 'Republicans are Fascists' propaganda during his entire time in office.  I shouldn't need to reprise that?  Trump is being labeled as a Putin Friend or Putin Light, a potential strong man.  He too is going to be tagged as a dictator in an un American style.  His failure to 'drain the swamp' in his cabinet choices will also get him tagged as a representative of the elite.  I'm not going to argue against the rural perception that the blue folk are trying to dictate over them.  That's real enough and has cause enough.  Just don't lose track of equal and opposite beliefs on the other side.

I also see the culture wars stuff as coming from the bases more than from the elites, again using guns an reproductive health care as examples.  Oh, the elites of both stripes will use such issues to gather votes, but the bases care about such issues in and of themselves and would with or without encouragement and support from the wealthy.

He was talking to me about the blue side. Unless you've a significant change, you are on the blue side. You may make some moves and try to relate but your still on that side sticking to your scientific values and dreams of saving the world with a group who see's more value in welfare and expanding welfare then they do in work and saving jobs or opening our market via lowering corporate tax rate and creating new jobs naturally with the money/jobs that will flow in. He's a Libertarian. You may want to consider listening to him considering that he wasn't on  on either one of our sides and he chose my side for his own reasons in this election just like I chose the Republican party for my own reasons in 2000'. Why are you loosing us and what are the reasons?

Wrong. Donald Trump is a big-government right-winger, a racist and a religious bigot, someone delighted to use political power to force an ultra-conservative culture upon people who do not share that culture. Donald Trump might be hostile to welfare for the poor, but he has few qualms about using the Treasure to enrich and enforce the collective will of the economic elites. His stated view is freedom to exact the most from the non-elites by elites while using the government to repress anyone who gets in the way. He is closer to being a fascist than to being a libertarian. In view of the hostility of Donald Trump and the GOP majorities in both Houses of Congress, liberals will need to act as libertarians on economics, trusting the government to do practically nothing for them but having the potential to great harm.

Scientific values? Science and technology have gotten us wonders from reaping equipment to cell phones; they have gotten us vaccines and air conditioning. Science and technology have made food cheap and life longer. Just outside of science, rational thought will offer us choices on how to use the bounties of technological improvements of enhanced productivity and access to enriching culture.

Rational thought tells me to investigate how demagogues have operated in power in countries that they have taken over. Right (Hitler) or Left (Mao), they have always gotten bad results -- a ravaged economy, a brain drain, civil strife, and  repression. Nothing says that demagoguery will work better in America than it does now in Venezuela. We will see our civic institutions and our culture stressed as they have not been since the Civil War. To be sure, reason is not enough; reason without kindness and morals can get the Reign of Terror within the French Revolutionary era.

We have an economic reality with which to contend: productivity outpacing pay. Such is great for profits of owners, bit horrible for workers. This may be a consequence of technology that replaces the human  touch with a computer...  maybe we will need some enforced profit-sharing as heavy taxes on easy income, a solution of Henry George (not Karl Marx). Private ownership of productive capital has its benefits. So get a grant to do something good and make a good living off it. The alternative could be mass poverty.The Right has a solution to productivity outpacing pay: more of the same.

We liberals lost because the Right is so good at appealing to visceral issues like race, guns, and religion. Eventually the Right will have to show that they can make good their promises or resort to a police state to suppress dissent to a brutal order that defines the truth as whatever serves the ruling elite -- or they will go down.

I see productivity outpacing pay as the route to a very nasty depression that results from the absence of buyers for the cornucopia of consumer goods and services. I see the promotion of outright superstition (like creationism) as a gutting of science. I see the anti-intellectualism of Donald Trump as a trend that could cause people to think twice about bringing or even keeping their talents in America. Just think of this: if you like Silicon Valley you will probably like Spain, which has much the same climate and some similarities of culture -- and a language fairly easy to learn. Spain is relatively immune to the Far Right even in a time of great hardships because the Spanish remember Francisco Franco and his mind-numbing, soul-crushing, impoverished order all too well and want nothing resembling it. Such could solve much of the high unemployment in Spain.

The question is now why we liberals are 'losing' the common man... Liberalism requires some intellectual maturity to flourish, and it is more likely to flourish among people of a certain level of intellectual sophistication than among ignoramuses. But 'more likely'. When authoritarian conservatism brings nothing but pain, working people will recognize that liberalism has to offer, like fair play that the authoritarian Right can never offer. We liberals have had solutions to mass poverty in the past, and we may get to offer much the same in the near future as Donald Trump proves a dreadful President. May get, that is -- if we don;t end up in prison camps for dissidents.