02-14-2021, 10:22 AM
(02-13-2021, 10:49 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(02-13-2021, 10:35 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Even if we get past our racial divide, to the extent that racism/xenophobia no longer dominate a major political party, as it now dominates the Republicans under Trump, we still will face the neo-liberal divide. The earlier Republican extremism of Reagan will still need to be overcome before we can get back to progress after 40 years of regression and decline. We have sunk so far now, that more than one ideology or prejudice needs to be overcome before sanity is restored to the USA.
No doubt, however, that getting past the first racist hurdle, however, will help us get past the second neo-liberal one, since there is some overlap between them.
Confirmed. The unraveling Republican Party was one of both elitism and racism. There seems to be a three way fight pending between Trump and the racists, McConnell and the elitists, and the Lincoln Project and the true conservatives. McConnell chose to let the racists live on in order to avoid primary challenges to some of his elitist members of congress. Yet, he wants Trump and his followers to fade.
Out of concern for my own safety I do not go to bars unless I know the people there or trust the people who encourage me to go there. A good bar needs a bouncer who can eject someone who seems to be going the wrong way. Arguments happen over all sorts of things, including topics that rile people up -- like politics and sports. In my case My body language may suggest something contrary to what I feel. I might seem to be ogling someone's wife or girlfriend despite disinterest or discretion. That is potentially good for a quick, hard punch to my face.
But that is my safety. If I own the bar I want it to be safe. I don't want the cops paying too many visits because of brawls. That might case me to lose my liquor license. Bar-and-grill combinations are far more profitable than diners, and a bar-and grill whose owner loses a liquor license might not survive long strictly relying on the quality of the short-order cook. Although more traffic into a bar might seem a good idea, there are people that you do not want... like the people who get angry quick and with the tiniest provocation. Such people might cause you to lose a more desirable customer to a stay in the hospital. Then there are people who might be fairly good customers. OK, I am good for only two drinks, but maybe I'll buy some food to go along. Beer goes well with steak, and wine goes well with fish or chicken. But get a reputation for violence as a bar, and I am staying away.
OK. Now how does this apply to politics? Some people are trouble. If they can be linked to you, then you scare away people who might otherwise vote for you. Most people have some values, including an aversion to violence, child abuse, drugs, scams, exploitative sexuality, and religious fanaticism. For good reason you do not hold campaign events at sexually-oriented businesses, and you do not speak well of terrorists, child molesters, or extremists. If you are a white conservative, you do not welcome the endorsement of the KKK, and if you are a black liberal you do not welcome the endorsement of the New Black Panther Party.
But remember the TEA Party. It was fanatical, and it was rigid in its values. It would vote for anyone anti-liberal -- and its vote was certain. It did avoid calling for political violence or overt racism or religious bigotry. It vilified liberals on behalf of the super-rich, so that was welcome to some rapacious tycoons who had visions of tax cuts, regulatory relief, and perhaps the evisceration of unions. America could offer the dream that capitalists have often sought to achieve: first-world productivity with third-world pay. Everything would be expensive except wages. That was ten years ago, and that had such effects as replacing Russ Feingold with Ron Johnson, who now challenges another Wisconsin pol as the greatest disgrace to the political heritage of Wisconsin. He may be awful in the sense that Jesse Helms was awful, but he certainly pleases the tycoons and executives despite his expression of conspiracy theories. Ron Johnson was not one-time-and-gone. Some people are callow enough to believe that no human suffering can ever be in excess so long as such turns a profit, enforces the will of elites, and facilitate sybaritic indulgence in the presence of mass misery. Those people, I must regret, seem to have the funds to invest in the political process. If such people ever feel themselves in danger of a Marxist revolution they might set up some high-tech versions of the auto-da-fe to demonstrate the wisdom of endorsing one's acquiescence with hunger, fear, and insecurity. Maybe as in a fascist order, working to exhaustion on near-starvation rations is better than working to exhaustion on starvation rations with overseers who make Simon Legree look charitable by contrast.
But I digress from that nightmare. Things didn't quite go that way. Thank God! We had portents of Orwellian Newspeak as the inchoate new language of politics and news. A secret police that enforces the will of the Leader seemed to be forming. In much of America people had the banners that one associates with a personality cult. We were not far from a second term of Donald Trump, the most despotic President that we have ever had.
Quote:I would like to see the true conservatives come out on top eventually, but right now they are also rans. In the meantime the three factions of the Republicans hopefully won't challenge a Democratic push to at last solve problems again. I also see Trump's big lies as spoiling after enough years are passed. Obama wasn't born in the US? Mexico will pay for the wall? COVID was a hoax. By the time 2022 and 2024 roll around, the lie that there was voter fraud in 2020 will have expired too and McConnell will find he bought into a loyalty to Trump which has turned sour.
The old conservative values of hierarchy of talent, rationality, learning, and economic virtue (work, caution, asset-stewardship, diligence, dedication, integrity, thrift) may end up in a welcoming new home -- the Democratic Party. Those virtues seem to well fit America's Model Minorities... and they could well fit straight, white, Christians, too. People can act conservative without being fascist pigs.
No political order and no economic system can thrive forever on absurdity. All falsehood, whether lies or foolishness, is absurdity. The best economic models have been created by chemists specializing in thermodynamics. The first law of thermodynamics (that you cannot get something from nothing), the second, (that all economic processes result in decay just as chemical processes result in waste heat) , and the third (that all things tend to rot unless one puts effort into them, and that implies more rot) are inescapable. The chemists were doing economics as an avocation... and economics is the social study that most resembles a hard science if one wishes.
Donald Trump seemed to have set America on a fast track to decay. This said, fast tracks to undesirable destinations must themselves be plotted and laid. If we are going back to what used to work, then so be it. OK, we do not need homophobia, Jim Crow, elderly people working until they drop (and likely taking others with them), child labor, or the horrid conditions of the early-industrial era. Technology and the moral values that the vast majority of us accept make such bad stuff unnecessary.
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.