The Partisan Divide on Issues

[pbrower2a]

(04-05-2020, 09:19 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(04-03-2020, 06:51 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: Hmm.  About the time the coronavirus exploded, this thread seems to have died too.  Classic seems to have vanished from the forums.  He is not here to defend the ignoring of science by crying hoax or fake news, the inability to solve problems in the name of low taxes and small government.  Why not?  Save money by firing the people who prepare for pandemics?  With global warming and bridge infrastructure being slow problems that can seem prudent to ignore by elderly leaders, the virus is a much faster acting problem.  It brought things to a head.

In many ways the virus seems designed to wake up a self oriented populace to focus on the country rather than themselves.  The only answer, other than dropping dead, is for big government to throw lots of money at the problem while telling the populace how to respond.  The alternative is to watch grandma drop dead.

Is there anyone ready to speak up now for the Red pattern in it’s extreme?  I am not saying LBJ’s Great Society didn’t take things too far.  We were really into throwing lots of money at big problems in those days.  Even the G.I. generation needed a selfish do nothing break.

But is anyone left who thinks the break’s time isn’t at an end?  What do Classic’s ‘Americans’ become in the face of a real threat?

I took a break. As I've mentioned before, you don't have to worry about Classic's America because Classic's America is capable of getting through just about anything these days. As I recall, the so-called healthcare crisis and the so called global warming crisis took precedence over future pandemic preparations and funding associated with it. Right now, the liberals don't really have much of a leg to stand on these days.

"Your" America enables a callow demagogue who has told them exactly what they want to hear even if such is contrary to rational science, greatly distorts what is generally known about human nature, and drips with animus. "Your" America has yet to recognize how intellectually and morally empty, yet full of himself, that our President is. "Your" America has an economic vision of doing things on the cheap even when such does great harm to the many on behalf of entrenched elites. "Your" America has poor impulse control and much proclivity toward superstition. 

We can all be behind the times. I used to be on top of technological change... but that was forty years ago. I could return to the technological ways of 1980 and be happy. High technology is no unmixed blessing; people who don't know what to do with it can get into big trouble. It better serves wise and decent people than it serves dullards and reprobates.

High technology has given us more power to do delightful things. It has also given us more capacity to hurt people badly. Maybe the tweets and Facebook messages that drip with cruelty are no worse than the old poison-pen articles. Human nature has not changed that much since antiquity. Wise people still read Plato, and some people can get great moral sophistication out of expert disputation of the content of the Torah and Talmud. (Good reason exists for all the excellent Jewish lawyers, and it is not that Jews are particularly greedy and materialistic; from my experience they are no more greedy or materialistic than the rest of us). 

To do best with the technology of using information we need more formal education -- not less. More people need more education, which means that the old norm of K-12 is no longer enough. K-14 must become the new norm because economics, psychology, and comparative politics is not high-school material. So people will be more sophisticated and still do blue-collar work? We still need people to do oil changes and drive tractors. The real tragedy is that people do their work, under whatever collar, and live in gross ignorance. K-14 education should of course expand our culture so that we know of the treasures that bring more bliss than some mindless consumerism. Just think of it. My world fell apart one day as I got the introduction to poverty in the most materialistic society on Earth, one with little mercy toward the poor. You guessed it: it is a country that demands rugged individualism yet treats individuality as an extreme heresy. 

To be blunt, I was contemplating suicide and the means of achieving it, and this music  reminded me that there was something for which to live. 



 

I'm not going to tell you which version is best. It takes an hour to perform, but this delightful work needs every moment.  

"Your" America has little respect for the high-brow. Mine does. Mine can reach into the past, as to music 200 (Schubert), 250 (Haydn), 300 (J S Bach), or 400 (Monteverdi) and find ample riches... and don't ignore music more recent such as string quartets of Bartok and Shostakovich. Human nature does not change, especially in its ability to appreciate cultural expressions that say much in an hour or so. This work takes an hour, and it takes one on a roller coaster of emotions. Despair and hope are opposite sides of the same coin. 

I do not consider myself better for knowing this -- only fortunate. Wise people may not believe in luck, but when they get a lucky break they certainly exploit it to the fullest. 

We are all going through a rough time. Many of us have spare time on our hands that we never expected, and such is terrifying. Plenty of people had no idea of how people would live as the normal workweek went from seventy hours a week to forty... and we are going to have to struggle with the consequences of high and inexpensive productivity that can get us much the same with twenty hours of work as we got with forty. We are stuck with recorded video or with cable-casts for motion pictures. It is cheap to drive a car, but there is no place to go. People used to talk, but scared as people are to get or spread viruses, people zip their lips in grocery stores as if they were scared to let out some secrets to the Abwehr or the Gestapo. Libraries and concert halls are closed.  If there is one silver lining in this plague it is that those who survive it will come out of it knowing what matters and what doesn't. Just think of the experienced the London Blitz, truly a scary time; only then could they realize how precious life could be and how much meaning life can have.  

OK. I am 64. Crass expressions of materialism turn me off. Sports cars don't excite me... but I outgrew my love for vehicular speed before I was old enough to drive. I do not need to own a painting to appreciate it. I'd rather create than wallow in materialism.