The Partisan Divide on Issues

[Bob Butler 54]

(04-07-2020, 01:27 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(04-07-2020, 07:45 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(04-07-2020, 02:50 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: I have yet to figure what Donald Trump does well that is a legitimate achievement. Oh, he got elected? In a fluke.

Not a fluke.  He was willing to tell a bunch of people what they thought they believed.  The Republican Establishment had long had enough affinity to the elites that the Tea Party did not trust them.  Reagan was in touch with his time, but years of ever more extreme policies enough to keep moving the US further in the same direction was not practical.  They had squeezed all the blood out of the stone, but the base wanted more.  Trump gave it to them.  But while ever smaller government, smaller taxes, and thus the less willingness to solve or even perceive of problems is a direction that sounds better than it is, a direction one can only sustain for a finite time.

Isn't it ironic, that the two advanced nations with the worst records on preparedness (for anything) are Reagan's US and Thatcher's UK.  Letting the greed heads run wild may have produced some small benefit to society, but the cost is proving  unacceptably high.  The anti-taxers created the perfect storm, and COVID-19 is riding that storm, until the storm gets tamed.  Any bets on how much of the Reagan/Thatcher meme will survive?

Quite a bit, unfortunately. Think Jim Crow after slavery. Think the robber barons of the gilded age after the autocratic slave owners. Elitism, racism, division of wealth, and tribal thinking are insidiously deep in the culture. With luck we might get another progressive period, but another conservative time is apt to rise come the unraveling.

Alas, not my problem.