Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Bipartisan Senate group proposes ‘no fly, no buy’ gun measure
(12-04-2018, 06:17 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: A quibble first, and one thing missing.

(12-03-2018, 12:42 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: 4. The sorts of shared experiences that youth get are not what they used to be. Being a Boy Scout used to mean something, and it was a common experience among boys of a certain age. It is now a rarity; Scouting takes up too much time, has no dazzle, and demands too much suppression of individuality and indulgence.

The Boy Scouts gave a supplementary education when there was a risk of rural colonial skills being lost.  They were, but they were obsolete.  Youth these days are offered a lot of organized sports, with girl children offered dance and cheerleading as well.  This my or may not be ideal, but it does provide a common experience.

I find the difference to be a lack of what is sometimes being called 'feral children'.  There is lots of being driven to organized events, organized by adults, and less chance or time and to wander unsupervised.

***

What you seemed to have missed was the deplorables.  The old Republican Party in Bush 43's time may have been an alliance between NeoCon Military, Big Oil and the Evangelists.  The  NeoCons belief in high tech giving the us superiority was discredited by the need to keep low tech boots on the ground in a modern proxy war.  Big Oil no longer dominates as it did in the 43 administration, but only as the other elements of the elite have stepped up.  What is left is that the elites and the rural alliance is becoming strained.  The rural people are justly unwilling to trust their Washington elites, but will instead give their allegiance to people like Palin or Trump.  So far, they have found only people who remain loyal to the elites, who do not drain the swamp but are the swamp.

The 'Deplorables' include not only the under-educated white Christian (largely Fundamentalist) losers of the economic struggle in America who were never going to enjoy the cultural richness of a diverse America, but also the economic elites who would face competition from people not white and nominally Christian. (OK, Sheldon Adelson is very much a 'Deplorable'; consider that all that he has to offer is the rip-off of casino gambling). Palin and Trump are similar in their intellectual superficiality, and the 'Deplorables' consider such a sort of innocence. The 'Deplorables' had their bad experiences with schoolteachers who corrected  their grammar, and they consider educated people of any kind an abusive, exploitative elite.

The problem is in part that one cannot challenge the system unless able to express one's discord with coherent language -- implying word choice and syntax. If I look at the struggle of African-Americans against their systematic degradation, I find that the educated elite among blacks, whether Booker T. Washington or W. E. B. DuBois in the past, as the ones who challenged the status quo by using the tools of language and rational thought to show the disparity between the stated ideals of American  civic life and the sordid reality. Because the best and brightest often ended up in the pulpit, someone like Martin Luther King could show how un-Christian and immoral segregation is. Language, logic, and moral judgment are essential to radical change.  


Quote:Two element today are the difference between believing in Reaganomic short term policy and voting deplorably, supporting the Republican Southern Strategy.  Reaganomics just puts an emphasis on the short term and invites the sort of economic disaster that flips the see saw.  Deplorable voting maintains white male protestant superiority, and gives those anchored in so called America a chance to be superior to certain minorities.  That leads to small government and the lack of services to Those People and perceived independence.  Both sets of beliefs as you say are centered in the middle of the country.

Even formal education is a 'long-term' solution to personal problems. The old objective of a university education was to improve the student so that he would not be the swine who devours the pearls, but instead recognizes that the pearls are worthy of separating from something suitable only for eating. We all know what youth can be like if it believes in nothing other than immediate gratification; it is not pretty. 

This said, the 'Deplorables' obviously see others getting ahead despite being non-white or non-Christian. The 'deplorable' are at most barely middle-class in economic result unless they are the pigs who own or manage the monopoly, cartel, or crony-capitalist business of America for whom fascism would be the dream for getting people to work to exhaustion for survival rations and slum housing in a thoroughly grim, dreary, joyless world. It is best that these people never watch Crazy Rich Asians; 'model minorities' are the people most vulnerable to dispossession, abuse, and genocide when the opportunity arises. Just think of German Jews who thought that they differed from gentile Germans only by rejecting Jesus, not eating pork or shellfish, and having their religious life in Hebrew instead of German or Latin. People often see people somehow different from themselves doing well, and that can only mean exploitation.


Quote:I can't say the modern problems didn't lurk in Bush 43's administration, but in some ways the small government and the lack of solving problems that do show more clearly in urban environments drives the difference.

It's as much ethnicity as anything else. Poor blacks recognize the black bourgeoisie as allies and not as enemies. Poor Hispanics see well-off Hispanics as allies and not as enemies. Poor Asians see the well-off of their ethnic group as allies and not as enemies. Poor whites see the white middle class as exploiters and abusers. But ask yourself: if you are part of the northern white middle class, what have you ever done for poor whites living in the Mountain or Deep South? Probably nothing except perhaps to buy some souvenirs while on a trip to Great Smoky Mountains National Park. If you think that 'Country' isn't music in the sense that J S Bach is music, then you are not part of the culture. You might as well be Japanese.

Democratic pols Up North used to give a damn about poor white people in the Mountain and Deep South -- but that is over. It is hard to determine where culpability lies.
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.


Reply


Messages In This Thread
RE: Bipartisan Senate group proposes ‘no fly, no buy’ gun measure - by pbrower2a - 12-04-2018, 12:14 PM

Possibly Related Threads...
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  Buy Passport,Driver License,Age & ID Card,(Whatsapp:.......: +1 (551) 239-2904) Visas huunnjh655 0 135 03-01-2024, 08:43 AM
Last Post: huunnjh655
  Buy Real and Fake Passports, ID Cards, Driving Licenses, SSN, Birth Certificates, Dea dominicadomi 0 41 02-22-2024, 08:26 PM
Last Post: dominicadomi
  House passes bill to expand background checks for gun sales HealthyDebate 49 7,148 11-22-2022, 02:22 PM
Last Post: pbrower2a
  Hawaii bill would allow gun seizure after hospitalization nebraska 23 11,680 06-08-2022, 05:46 PM
Last Post: beechnut79
  Young Americans have rapidly turned against gun control, poll finds Einzige 5 2,133 04-30-2021, 08:09 AM
Last Post: David Horn
  2022 elections: House, Senate, State governorships pbrower2a 13 3,849 04-28-2021, 04:55 AM
Last Post: pbrower2a
  Kyrsten Synema (D - Az) brings a cake into the Senate to downvote min. wage hike Einzige 104 26,907 04-22-2021, 03:21 AM
Last Post: pbrower2a
  Hawaii Senate approves nation’s highest income tax rate HealthyDebate 0 765 03-12-2021, 06:46 PM
Last Post: HealthyDebate
  House of Delegates Passes Sweeping Gun-Control Bill stillretired 6 1,924 03-10-2021, 01:43 AM
Last Post: Kate1999
  Biden faces bipartisan backlash over Syria bombing Kate1999 0 708 03-09-2021, 07:01 PM
Last Post: Kate1999

Forum Jump:


Users browsing this thread: 3 Guest(s)