06-22-2020, 10:53 AM
(06-21-2020, 06:43 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Those people congregating online today are mostly the poor people and leaders of movements and groups, not so much the politicians. I don't know what motivates Classic Xer, really. Several things. Self-reliance is a good virtue. Self-responsibility too. We can improve our lives by using and expanding our consciousness and abilities. It's a matter of balance. The Republicans hold up self-reliance as the only valid economic virtue, and obedience to tradition the only moral or spiritual one. I disagree.
Responsibility and self-reliance are good things. The more commonplace they are, the stronger our society is. Of course, these fare best when they get rewards. These are no excuses for an entrenched elite telling that responsibility means strictly that the common man suffer for the economic elites so that the little man can endure an animal-like existence while elites wallow in opulent splendor. The latter is what Trump wants as does the bulk of the Republican Party.
Quote:In my experience, the bosses, whether profit or non-profit, could always find some reason to fire me or some of my friends. Bosses don't care about anything but their power and money, as a rule. To allow them to oppress us and keep us in poverty on the rationale of self-reliance causes a society where 40% or more of the people are poor and only a few are rich. But society in this condition will not survive, nor is it a worthwhile society in which to live. We all depend on each other, and when 40% of the people are suffering in the midst of riches, our society is in danger. Self-reliance is great, but so is compassion, justice, and competent thought and awareness. So is democracy in the workplace, and everyplace.
That is why we need an economic order more congenial to small business. We need more capitalism, and not less. Monopolistic profit and excessive compensation to business executives are not capitalism; they are consequences of class privilege that has nothing to do with a free and competitive market
Quote:It's interesting that just like Occupy, and the Parkland students, this "poor people's campaign for moral revival" claims to be non-partisan, even though they ask people to vote and voice the same stances as progressive Democrats do. They try to avoid being labeled by people like Classic Xer, because politics is devalued the way Classic Xer devalues it. That will not work; people today need to be partisan.
The Democratic Party can become a big-tent Party. If the choice is between a democratic party and a fascist or Marxist-Leninist Party, such is less desirable than democracy within one party. Consider the Democratic Party in the USA in the 1930's or the African National Congress in South Africa in the late 1990's. Historically the Democratic Party has twice outlived its competition (Federalists and Whigs), only to itself have a dissident wing emerge and become a separate Party. That is how the Republican party emerged in the 1850's; it is arguable that the Republican Party lost most relevance in the 1930's only to re-emerge.
This said, we don't need any Party that reeks of fascism.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.