The Partisan Divide on Issues

[pbrower2a]

(08-09-2020, 07:30 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(08-09-2020, 03:46 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(08-09-2020, 02:14 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: You must think that we live in a country like France or Germany where democracy alone determines it's national leaders and priorities.  Guess what, we don't live in a country that's set up like either of them. Here's what we are going do eventually, we are eventually going to boot a blue state or two or some blue cities from the American union and see what happens to them.

Meanwhile, here on Earth One, a lot of formerly red people are turning blue.

You ought to check every once in a while against reality before you start sharing daydreams.

Really?? I don't know a red voter who is turning blue. But, I do know several middle aged blues who are turning more red or already turned red a while ago. I assume an uppity old liberal college boy like yourself doesn't spend as much quality time interacting with fowl mouthed middle of the road/middle American college people and regular working class people these days. I think you better start checking reality vs relying on popular opinion and whatever the liberals who are paid to tell you what you want to hear are saying these days. You don't seem like the type who can handle bad news or handle accepting that you're wrong either.

Even I admit to frequently using conservative arguments against Donald Trump. We liberals have run out of new liberal arguments. The old ones remain valid. Even the impeachment of Donald Trump was what one would have expected conservatives to use against in some hypothetical case a liberal who sold out national security out of a misguided belief that some totalitarian state is a friend to be imitated. 

YouTube has plenty of videos showing people until recently reliably Republican in their vote baring their consciences while defending their old values while saying that they will vote for Joe Biden to defend those old values.   

Quote:You're right about me. You've been speaking with a modern day American Revolutionary who doesn't think much of the revolutionaries associated with Democratic side or think much of the Democratic party itself.

May I suggest that you get a copy of Eric Hoffer's The True Believer, a guide to political fanatics more likely to swing from one expression of fanatical, extremist politics to the supposed antipodes of his recent position rather than rejoining the sane, humane mainstream. As Hoffer puts it.

The opposite of a raging fascist is not a raging Communist. The opposite of a raging fascist is a sober liberal. Hoffer could explain why fascists and Nazis could become obedient servants of the Commies. The Commies of eastern Europe recruited from among rank-and-file the Hlinka Guard of Slovakia, the Iron Guard of Romania, the Arrow Cross of Hungary, and the Ustase of Croatia to be the brutal secret police of Commie regimes. Before that, fascists were often former extreme Leftists, including Commies. 

If you wonder who would be the most willing servants of a Commie regime in America, then look no further than the KKK.  What? The ideology is so dissimilar? Maybe the extremists are so cold and unfeeling that they need extremism to be convinced that they have identity in their beliefs. Hoffer has been dead for over forty years, but just take another look at what he says and you find fascistic brutes who served Satan Hussein going over to the similarly inhuman ISIS.  A sober liberal has rock-solid principles against which to judge public officials who turn police dogs and water cannons upon peaceful protesters. 

Another group that, I regret to say, is prone to not having any real beliefs is often the police and  Armed Services who simply obey the orders of those who pay and feed them while giving them spiffy uniforms and impressive weapons. Maybe in America and some other democracies they get the chance to understand what they are defending, but all in all most revolutions are decided (think of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and the Nazi takeover in Germany) when the people seizing power pay the soldiers and police. In Russia most went from being obedient servants of the Tsar to being fully committed to Lenin and his Bolsheviks within one year. 

Hoffer also tells us that the line between "revolutionary" and "reactionary" isn't so stark as most of us want to believe. Consider the Révolution nationale of Marshal Philippe Pétain. Pétain repudiated democracy, allowed a personality cult to form around him, and promoted a ferocious assault upon the French Jews. But in his "revolution" he promoted a back-to-the-land movement out of distrust of working-class toilers in modern industry. Somehow he saw himself as leader of a revolution against 'decadent' Britain, urban life, the Jews, liberalism, weakened faith, and of course democracy. 



The peasant who believes in authoritarian religion and leadership is the cornerstone of the "new" France even if technological and economic modernity needs fewer peasants and more industrial workers, clerks, and small-scale (disproportionately Jewish, of course, as is the usual case in most of the West) entrepreneurs. The truly-modern world is a place of inquiry that might disquiet people who harbor obsolete ideas and prejudices. 



In contrast to the lofty "Liberty, Equality, and Brotherhood" is the banal "work, family, and fatherland"... a rejection of capitalism, self-interest, socialist tendencies, democracy, and of course the usual target of inhuman fascism -- the Jews. Vichy France, the Petinist regime, offers stability based upon brainwashed discipline in the schools, (dictatorial) order", thrift (in view of the absence of any safety net), and courage as exemplified in some perverse legion. 

Yes, it is change, and it is radical. You might fittingly ask yourself whether your division between people living in America as "real Americans" as opposed to... I dunno... "fake" Americans or others who do not deserve to be treated as Americans and will thus be treated as aliens with no rights including any expectation of decency is a wholesome idea. What you suggest has been tried in a country with many parallels to America, and that effort to reshape that country turned out quite badly.       
     

Quote:People like me don't give a shit about popular opinion and tend to go by the results they see or project. You're F---ED EITHER WAY AT THIS POINT.

So popular opinion is wonderful when it leads to the rise of Reagan (but not Obama!), the TEA Party, and Donald Trump? Sure, popular opinion can be very wrong, which explains why we have constitutional protections against mob rule. Example: lynch mobs reliably make their decisions by popular vote within the mob. We also have Constitutional protections against a despotic or dictatorial President, and those protections typically gut his authority. Your view on politics is "my way or the highway". That's how Nero, Ivan the Terrible, Lenin, Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Trujillo, Castro, Duvalier (either one), Kim (whether il-Sung, Jong-il, or Jong-un), Qaddafi, Pinochet, Videla, Satan Hussein, Mengistu, or Idi A-merderin' did things. 

Despotism and dictatorship are more effective at running up a body count than at serving the people even if the tyrannical leadership has some good intentions and fitting reforms. 

Concentration camps, shooting pits, and torture chambers will be no better in America than they were in the Third Reich for having the name "American" attached to them any more than Ted Bundy was a nicer person for being American than... oh, pick your national entity as a contrast.  

 

Quote:Do you prefer to go down with a Democrat at the helm or spared by a Republican.

Even if it were true it would be like choosing between getting COVID-19 or being bitten by a rattlesnake. Both can kill, and both can leave one badly messed up (rattlesnake bites often culminate in amputations). If we can't have another FDR, then the best that we can hope for is someone with the temperament of an Eisenhower or an Obama. It will be a while before we have the likes of a Kennedy who challenges us to do the equivalent of reaching for the stars again. We have too many practical problems to deal with yet, and the Millennial Generation is at least fifteen years from achieving political dominance. It is getting there. 

Most Americans would settle for another Obama at this point. He didn't create too many problems for us as a nation. If someone like Trump has the power to spare one personally from the worst, then we must ask whether anyone deserves the arbitrary power to do the worst to people.  

Quote:Dude, I don't care if Bumbling Biden and the Bumbling party run by a bunch of money/power hungry Jackasses go down hard and results in more chaos. Oh, and if our kids are called upon to serve and go in and clean up your party's fucking mess. I hope you and every other blue fool knows when its time to swallow your (expletive deleted) tongue, accept reality and look the other way for you own sake.

Much of American politics is setting the national budget, which explains why the Ways and Means Committee is one of the most powerful committees in Congress.  At this point the Democratic Party is far more rational, and it has principles other than the enrichment, indulgence, and power of selfish elites who see themselves as the sole measure of human merit. 

The next effective conservative Republican President will be a conservative version of Barack Obama (ethnicity and origin irrelevant) -- something like Eisenhower. Donald Trump is an unmitigated disaster, someone who demonstrates as clearly as is possible the hazard of electing an unprincipled, ignorant, selfish demagogue devoid of any ethical values.