03-15-2018, 11:17 AM
(03-15-2018, 12:51 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(03-14-2018, 06:46 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: It's a great day, with an extremist Republican being upset in PA, and the walkout by thousands and thousands of dedicated and aroused students demanding gun control so their lives are safe. I am so glad, and proud of them, and I will join them in the march here in San Jose on March 24, along with my UU church group.
It strikes me though, why it has to come to this. After the shock and activism following Newtown, and sit ins even in congress, and attempts time after time after each disaster, America still does not budge. It seems apparent that guns are this saeculum's slavery issue. America is really, really sick, and its disease is ammosexuality. It may be incurable, in which case we become fully barbarian. The gun issue may well be the catalyst for a civil war of some kind at the end of this 4T; maybe on a smaller scale, if the right wing gun-nut rebels can be easily defeated by a moderate-liberal government that takes power in the 2020s. If that moderate-liberal takeover occurs, and gun controls and bans on military weapons are passed, as now proposed, it will be in large measure due to the young activist late-millennial students today who by the thousands and thousands will be voting out the slaves of the NRA, the most evil institution in the USA today-- the equivalent of slavery in the 1860s. And they may enlist in the forces, perhaps led by a boomer gray champion president, that long about 2025-2028 will take down and disarm the gun-nut rebels who cannot adjust to 21st century realities. We'll see. Go students! Yeah!
Do you think the Democrats favorable view of Trump's policies and his willingness to support them had something to do with the victory? We'll have to see if he sticks to his promises or he switches and sides with the liberal Democrats on issues like immigration and the wall. Me, I'd say the debt is going to be the crisis issue. My daughter told me that the walk out wasn't a big deal at her school. She said most kids opted to stay in school which sounds about right as far as the community goes. The majority aren't liberals in the community.
Every demagogue has some attractive proposals as promises, and Donald Trump is no exception. Economic and political reality establish the impossibility of the achievement of the demagogue's promises. Donald Trump has simply reverted to doing exactly what a Marxist would expect of someone who believes in nothing other than his gain, indulgence, power, and self-esteem -- his blatant class interests or at the least those of the economic sector whence he gets his income. Most specifically, he is the hero of the landlord at the expense of the middle-class homeowner. Just think of it: Donald Trump would prefer that the person who now gets tax deductions for mortgage interest and property taxes lease some gilded slum of the soul from him than own his own home. Let us remember that Marxist analysis far better than anything else explains pathological manifestations of capitalism, especially the one-sided economic policies of rapacious plutocrats at their worst. Donald Trump is a really-nasty capitalist; of this there can be no doubt. He is not so much an innovator as a gouger. We are even finding that he may have corrupted a Miss Universe pageant so that it would favor winners 'not too ethnic' -- or at least, more seemingly white.
As a really-nasty capitalist, it is hardly surprising that he defends the National Rife Association, a pressure group and front for the firearms racket that cares little about the number of people who die of the misuse of their economic interest (firearms and ammunition) so long as the profits roll in. His suggestion for getting more safety in public schools is in part to arm teachers. I have taught, and there is no way in which I could teach anything civil with a firearm on my person. I teach in schools, and not in a meth lab. Police-held firearms might leave the needful impression to meth 'cooks' -- but I want to give even the kid with the most troubled background some chance. Intimidation is my last choice of motivations. Besides, a firearm in a classroom? I would prefer that a rattlesnake slither into a classroom than that a gun appear. Children can outrun rattlers, but they can't outrun bullets.
Many Democrats dislike abortion. So do I. I would prefer that kids get objective education on sexuality that includes the advocacy of premarital celibacy as an ideal, and 'safe sex' as a backup. I'd like more expenditures on infrastructure, but maybe not as I figure President Trump wants (the cornerstone being privatization to monopolistic gougers, rent-grabbers like he. Economic rent is already an excessive share of the American economy, and it usually results in higher costs without better service -- as with monopoly).
I have no problem with sport hunting for which there is much manufacture of high-quality guns, scopes, and ammo. If one wants to kill an animal like a deer, rabbit, or game fowl that flees an inept shot and is no longer a target, one needs a very good gun. Sport hunters bequeath those guns to their kids, and it might not be surprising that some young hunters are using rifles that were used by a great-grandfather that the young hunter has never met. Sport hunting is an old and distinguished culture not to be confused with what urban gangs have. Urban gangs do not know about Duke Ellington or Frida Kahlo, but they certainly know guns. Gun control can make life tougher for the Bloods, Crips, and MS-13, or such an apparent nutcase as Dylann Roof or Nikolas Cruz. You can figure that teenagers in rural southwest Pennsylvania identify with kids slaughtered in Marjory Stoneman High School.
The culture is changing, and it may be turning in some places that Donald Trump won -- but also Mitt Romney, John McCain, and Dubya won. Sure I agree with the President on MS-13, but I can tell you some good things about some of the people of whom the President says are 'rapists and drug traffickers'.
Free trade is a good idea, and this is where I disagree with Connor Lamb. If you have a job depending upon the manufacture or extraction of commodities, then you have cause to distrust free trade because tariffs can compel Americans to subsidize your job. But (and Donald Trump was just caught on this) you ignore services, tariffs hurt you as a consumer. Maybe we need to get more people to get jobs in the international service industries from insurance to entertainment. Think about it: such companies as Disney and Warner manufacture very little, but they certainly make some valuable intangibles for trade -- like movies. Digital transmission of feature films has replaced the film reel as a means of supplying entertainment but is also more valuable.
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.