The Partisan Divide on Issues

[pbrower2a]

(07-07-2020, 10:32 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(07-06-2020, 11:12 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(07-06-2020, 10:54 PM)beechnut79 Wrote: Robert E. Lee actually tried to reunify the country once the issue was decided.  There are many wo feel that the US will not survive this crisis as a 50 state nation at least. Makes you wonder if the southern states might try to reform the Confederacy. If so, would they be enlightened enough as to not attempt to re-form Jim Crow laws let alone slavery.  I would bet that they would be.  I can see the possibility of Alaska joining Canada and Hawaii becoming its own nation.  Many now question whether the idea of 50 states under one central government is any longer feasible.

This is worth remembering. General Robert E. Lee was an excellent general. Once he surrendered at Appomattox he made clear that the Confederate cause and slavery were dead beyond any recovery. He lived only five years after the Confederate defeat, and one can only imagine o- 

He did not like losing, of course, but note well that he opposed the "Lost Cause" violence against blacks. He advocated reconciliation and not resistance. The Klan cruelty was out of his sympathy. So give up slavery and go for a full recovery, whatever that took.

Lee is himself a tragic figure in American history... and far more complex than his image. One can obviously not confuse him with the proto-fascist Nathan Bedford Forrest.

Yep. The bulk of South accepted their defeat as absolute (God's Will), let bygones be bygones and pledged their allegiance to the Union and the defense of the United States of America. Do you think we would have one World War I and World War II without the help and support of all their kids and grand kids and the kids and the grand kids of the slaves. So, as groups on your side are waging a war to stamp them out and picking a fight with us in the North as well, where does that leave you (the poor idiot stuck in middle with no where to go or turn because you alone are viewed as easy prey). I don't need a Democrat to recognize the contributions of Black Americans or the quality of Black Americans either. You might but I don't. I'm on the Pro American side and unfortunately you are on the Anti American side. I'm not saying that there aren't any Pro Americans in between because there are a lot of them as well. Are the do nothing Republicans ready to work and sacrifice for America? We'll see, if not, lumping them in with the Democrats ain't going to be a problem.

The difference between the KKK and Nazi fascists was on what to do with blacks. The KKK would have returned blacks to slavery had they had the chance, and would have likely murdered those who resisted. The Nazis would have murdered blacks after exploiting them as slave laborers on short rations. 

The problem in America is that the dominant elite in economics is mostly a coalition between the pre-industrial elites (big landowners), para-industrial elites (urban landlords like Trump), and industrial elites who have found some proletarian cultural values (religious superstition, ethnic and religious bigotry, and overall anti-intellectualism). But this is proving to be a cultural dead end as well as moral absurdity. 

The economic elites want 95% of the people suffering for 2% of the people, which is grossly undemocratic from an economic standpoint. Such requires that all but that elite and perhaps 3% or so (who would succeed under any social order) and about 3% who would succeed in any non-Marxist social order sell out any early dreams quickly -- thus be a domestic servant instead of an opera singer or a laborer instead of a physician. (So maybe you become a K-12 teacher if you are smart and generally competent in a democratic order... but in a not-so-democratic order such as Ku Kluxistan or racist South Africa, if you are born into the wrong ethnic group you will be crushed unless you submit to a rigid hierarchy). On the other hand, social mobility in America is typically downward, consistent with a democracy going authoritarian and elitist.  

You have a derogatory view of poor people of color. At the least the non-poor people of color seem to show far more empathy toward poor people of their ethnic group than do non-poor white people toward poor whites. OK, white people of cultural privilege, the sorts who visit art galleries, read as a habit, and listen to abstract music with some intellectual appeal (classical, jazz, folk, and some very sophisticated rock -- rhythm-and-blues qualifies as someone else's folk tradition) often cannot relate to poor white people who have an anti-intellectual heritage.  

Our educational system tantalizes youth with the promise that if they work hard with adequate devotion that they too can succeed greatly. This is not the authoritarian order that trains people to be cleaners and toilers because they are born into such an order. The Right is trying to establish an authoritarian order in which people other than the elites must subordinate themselves to those with the economic power. Such is feudal in pre-industrial times and fascist in industrial times. 

The economic Right used to believe that it needed to establish opportunity as a cause for getting people to believe in the capitalist order. That may have been tricky, but at least that had some rationale in results. The Hard Right has abandoned any pretense of offering opportunity to any outside an entrenched elite. If you wonder about bureaucratic hierarchies, then the fast track (and only) route to success within those is available only to a hereditary hierarchy -- something like the old Soviet nomenklatura that itself became as exploitative and repressive as feudal lords, sweat-shop exploiters, and mobsters. (That ultimately caused the fall of Communism in the Soviet Union and in the Soviet bloc -- the conflict between the promises of a 'classless society' and the rise of a new class of exploitative administrators).

We have a Hegelian conflict that you manifestly fail to understand. A new way of thought, originally revolutionary in methods and even mass appeal, begins to show conflicts with the feelings, reasoning, observations, and entrenched morals of those not in the elite. Toward the end of the run of that new order the elites begin to act like a cheating spouse "are you going to believe me or are you going to believe your lying eyes?" Modern technology except as conduits of pure entertainment depend upon sophisticated reasoning  and upon the honing of intellectual talent for its creation. Even in pure entertainment the really good stuff (much material from Pixar and Marvel) requires some well-honed talent for creating material of technical sophistication. As intellectual property becomes more important as a share of the economy and industrial production becomes little more than a means of achieving easily-sated needs, we have a conflict. 

In several respects we have a conflict that has festered  until it can only break. Exploitative capitalists promoted the irrationalism of racism, low mass culture, and religious fundamentalism  because racism well serves the precept of divide et impera, mass low culture stifles thought, and religious fundamentalism tells people to suffer in This World for rapacious elites because they will get their rewards in Heaven while those who insist upon something better here will be damned to Hell. 

The people whose ideology you support have failed, and for them to maintain their position they must resort to brutal repression. Those people see you as another expendable tool.