Generational Dynamics World View

[pbrower2a]

(11-01-2020, 10:29 AM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: ** 01-Nov-2020 World View: Tough luck

(10-31-2020, 06:14 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: >   It's your tough luck, Mr. X, that a majority of voters in enough
>   states chomp at the bit to replace the Milosevic-like President
>   that we now have.

Lol!  To start, see Proverbs 16:18.

I thought that that would be this one:



And, yes it is. Our President could do a deliberate show of extreme arrogance (pride can also mean a legitimate, positive sense of self-esteem for doing something admirable and honorable and achieving a legitimate success that makes the world better for others) such as having protesters tear-gassed so that he could have a photo op in which he stood holding a Bible that he seems to have never read and to never heed. Arrogant, or in the more Anglo-Saxon synonym, haughty, pride is itself destructive.

I know enough about the Bible to recognize that the best reading within it is the Gospels, Psalms, and Proverbs. I also recognize that I have terrible flaws as a person and must do an acting job simply to avoid letting those make the lives of many others miserable. 

   

Quote:The reason that your comment is so funny is that you have absolutely
no idea what I would consider lucky.

So first off, at my age hopefully I won't be around much longer.  So
I'll be a lot luckier than you, because you'll be alive and I'll be
dead.

Part of progress is that, distressing as it might be, the old people committed to old ways of life and demonstrably-obsolete ways of doing things lose their competence, their relevance, and their lives. Sure, it might be a good thing if Dmitri Shostakovich were still composing, Ludwig Wittgenstein were still philosophizing, Katharine Hepburn were still acting, Martin Luther King, Jr. (he would be 91, which he might have reached had he not been assassinated) were working our consciousness, and Georgia O'Keefe were still painting. We could do better with Hugh Scott and Tip O'Neill as politicians than much of what we now have.  I look at the Silent Generation dying off, and I miss the whimsy in popular music that is now fossilized and their biggest cultural contribution: a self-effacing comedy that takes the edge of the deadly seriousness that so many of us have. There is no more Leslie Nielson, Andy Griffith, Alan King, Joan Rivers, Tim Conway, Harvey Korman, Mary Tyler Moore, Flip Wilson, George Carlin, or Richard Pryor. Heck, Yogi Berra and Alex Karras could make sports funny -- and don't forget the comedy that Meadowlark Lemon could do on a basketball court. (Is Bob Uecker still around?) Many of us are too stuffy for our own good; we need to laugh some. What remains of the Silent generation of comedians either doesn't do comedy any more because it does something else (Dick Van Dyke, Alan Alda, Christopher Lloyd), has a foot in the grave (Mel Brooks, Bob Newhart), has simply gotten weird (Woody Allen), or is doing time for something not at all funny (Bill Cosby). 

I'm going to predict, based upon the generational theory of Howe and Strauss, that the Homeland Generation now approaching adulthood among its oldest, will recognize the fault within our collective, excessive seriousness (and self-righteousness) and the emptiness of pretentious claims to entitlement and solipsism. Such people as Donald Trump, Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, and Sean Hannity are objects of legitimate ridicule.

I admit that I philosophize too much and laugh too little. That goes with Asperger's syndrome. 
    

Quote:Second, "be careful what you wish for."  The evidence of criminal
behavior by the Biden family has become enormous in the last three
weeks, and won't go away if Biden wins.  There's an FBI investigation,
but even without that, there's enough information in public for the
public investigation to be self-sustaining.

Joe Biden has never enriched himself in his years of public service. When Barack Obama selected him as the VP nominee in 2008, our soon-to-be 44th President picked the least-rich US Senator in the Democratic Party. To be sure, Biden was living on his Senate salary, but he wasn't making money off insider information on the legislative process (which used to be an easy way of making money as a  Senator or Congress-critter), easy money from putting his name on a ghost-written book that gets onto a best-seller list, or retiring but keeping his campaign fund (Biden had arguably the most low-cost re-election campaign that anyone had). Biden did not have a critical state to deliver, so he looked to offer ideological cohesion, no hint of scandal (you can mention him writing material that looked plagiarized, but since then he has stayed out of the book-writing game), and no conflicts of interest.  

Quote:Biden would also have to deal with continuing antifa-blm fascist
violence and with the Wuhan Coronavirus crisis, and it's doubtful that
either he or Kamala has the management skills to deal with such
crises.

COVID-19 is a crisis as destructive as a soldier-devouring military stalemate that ends only when one side runs out of troops, as was World War I. If it began in Wuhan, China and was most likely spread from China by people with connections to China (heavily the Chinese diaspora) which had no idea of what it was doing, and then people largely connected to Wuhan as opposed to Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Kweichow, Hong Kong, Macau, etc. ... it is now an American crisis, and it is up to our political, scientific, commercial, and cultural leaders to deal with... Big Business, liberal politicians, the medical profession, scientific researchers, mainstream clergy, and the bulk of our creative people. There is much praise to be spread around. I even did my little act of kindness; rather than confronting people for not wearing masks when such was not the mandatory norm, I thanked people for wearing masks at Wal*Mart, Meijer, Spartan-Nash, and Kroger. Positive reinforcement works. Now that mask-wearing has become lax I do this again. 

It may be only a few zip codes, and not in the biggest cities, but I suggest it for others. Most people want to feel good about themselves. Considering what matters most, I will praise people who have "Trump 2020" masks on beginning tomorrow should I see that.  (Just put those  silly caps with the vapid slogan "Make America Great Again" into retirement. 

Quote:Third, as I've said many times, it's a principle of Generational
Dynamics that major decisions are made by the people, not by the
politicians.  Putting aside the rhetoric and massive criminal
corruption of the Democrats, the country's policies won't be very
different than under a second Trump term.  In particular, all that new
green deal stuff is so idiotic and laughable that it won't go
anywhere.  Biden might get some things done on the margins, like
removing some incentives for oil drilling, but nothing more.

OK, so that is how a free-market system works. The incentive to get a profit (and for a small-scale entrepreneur such as the operator of a bodega, a convenience store, a non-chain restaurant, or an insurance or real-estate agency is one's living and may be little more than what an assembly-line worker with a union contract gets) does far more good than the dictates of some despot who sees himself as the measure of national greatness or some central-planning board that can determine which state enterprise gets what resources and produces what.  The fault with the first is that it is as inhuman as the Leader; with the second the faults are that consumer choice does far better at rewarding wise decisions  (including thinking outside the box), intangible qualities of service, and adaptability to changing realities. The fault with our economic system is that it has scrapped competition in return for offering much schlock available cheaply, treating workers badly to keep costs low and profits high, and creating barriers for advancement within monopolized, vertically-integrated behemoths that reward elites lavishly for treating the common man badly. 

I see a trend that you may not: that we are at the end of the line for a certain model of economic development, at least in the advanced industrial world (countries near the median in economic development worldwide, which China dominates for obvious reasons and Mexico is probably the biggest country in population and industrial activity are close to that) in which producing more stuff is no longer a way of  creating human happiness. The technologies that can disseminate  virtual books, video, audio, and possibly even cultural events for which we no longer need the 'dead-tree editions', physical recordings on discs, photographic film, and the like make mass manufacture less necessary. We aren't going to be happier by having multiple refrigerators, ranges, dishwashers, washers, dryers, water softeners, or the like. Manufacturing is largely for either replacement of something broken or terribly obsolete or for population growth -- the latter a bad idea when we stare global warming as a menace that can make life miserable for billions just in time for the next Crisis Era. 

We will work less (unless our efforts go largely to enriching rentiers who serve as gate-keepers for opportunity dependent upon people paying them off and act more like feudal lords than like competitive capitalists) to make what we need because we will need no more stuff than we used to. Humanity will instead (at some point that will include neither of us; I am old enough to remember people who lived in the horse-and-buggy era at the stage at which telephones and phonographs were new things, who remembered that "red" was the color largely associated with the British Empire and not with socialism, when the elderly Queen of England and much else was Victoria instead of Elizabeth II, when the "Gay Nineties" had nothing to do with homosexuality, and when Art Nouveau was truly nouveau. The biggest differences:  industrial workers typically worked seventy hours a week and lived to age 40 or so, in contrast to the norm today in which industrial workers typically work 40-hour workweeks and live into their seventies, and that in America to live the Good Life one either had to be part of the WASP commercial elite in the North or the similarly-WASP agrarian elite of the former Confederacy.  

    

Quote:A good example is Barack Obama, whose planned policies were just as
idiotic as Biden's, but he got nothing done and, in the end, putting
aside the rhetoric and the massive corruption of the Democrats, the
country's policies under Obama were little different than under a
third Bush term.

Senator Mitch McConnell promised that he would do everything possible to ensure that Barack Obama would be a one-term President and did what he could do to ensure gridlock. In 2010 a cadre of economic elitists who believed, like the worst of all elites believe -- that no human suffering can ever be in excess so long as it enhances their power, indulgence, and gain -- financed a pseudo-populist Tea Party movement that accepted what those elites believed and faulted Obama for not bringing back America to the level of prosperity that Americans thought they had during the Dubya-era speculative boom. (The conservative economist and political thinker Friedrich Hayek explains as clearly as anyone that speculative booms are more effective at devouring capital than at creating any real prosperity.  Those booms, like those of the late 1920's and the middle of the Double-Zero decade create the illusion of prosperity while failing to improve life. When the illusion disappears, then people start to realize that they have been had... and an economic meltdown ensues).  
 

Quote:I've written about this many times, but it's worth repeating now.
Obama had plans to try to bring peace to the world through his
unopposed policies.

In June 2008, he said, "I am absolutely certain that generations from
now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was
the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to
the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to
slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a
war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best
hope on Earth."

Setting high standards and achieving some of them without doing real harm is far better than setting low, debased standards that hurt people -- and achieve them. Maybe Trump is far less harmful than he could have been because he is as incompetent as he is as a politician. 

Quote:At the time he said this, I thought it was just the usual crazy
nonsense crap coming from politicians, but I was shocked later that
Obama actually believed it.  In the 2008 campaign, Obama said that he
was going to heal the world as soon as he took office.  He would be
guided by facts, not like President Bush, who had been guided by
ideology and ignored facts.  He would cure global warming, close
Guantánamo island prison, become friendly with Iran and North Korea,
bring a two-state solution to Palestinians and Israelis, beat the
Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, impose strict gun control
policies, reflate the real estate and stock market bubbles and, of
course, provide universal health care.

That universal healthcare may have kept me from committing suicide. In my case that is definitive success for a policy.

Quote:Obama accomplished none of those goals.  He couldn't even accomplish
the simplest one -- closing Guantánamo -- which you'd think he'd be
able to do easily.  But no, he couldn't.  And Biden's policies are
even more idiotic than Obama's, and won't go anywhere except to
generate controversy.  But who knows?  Maybe Biden will get a
Nobel Peace Prize anyway.

Obama got the wrong Nobel prize. It should have been for economics. Still, putting an end to an economic meltdown that after a year and a half was as severe as that that began with the Great Stock Market Crash of 1929 in a year and a half as opposed to three full horrible years that in the first case culminated in the rise of Satan Incarnate in Germany... maybe he did make a huge difference. Obama backed the financial system before he could even start to go on his liberal agenda.    

Quote:The above is particularly true if Biden is forced to leave office
and Kamala takes over.  She's a total loon, extremely divisive,
and very unpopular.

Let us see how Donald Trump does in today's Presidential election. Maybe Donald Trump  "is a total loon, extremely divisive, and very unpopular". For people who want Donald Trump out of office, Joe Biden may be the model of an antithesis (an Establishment type who shares none of Trump's vindictiveness, cruelty, corruption, and ruthlessness) and Kamala Harris may be the one to elicit the needed votes. 

I do not expect perfection in my political leaders, and if you see perfection in a political leader, then you are most likely in that politician's cult. Donald Trump has a cult of personality as obnoxious as that of the late Fidel Castro or Robert Mugabe.

Quote:For me, a Biden/Kamala presidency will be as incompetent as the Obama
presidency, but Biden won't have Obama's charisma (or Bill Clinton's
charisma).  I know that I had to be very careful when criticizing
Obama's policies, because anyone criticizing Obama was immediately
called a racist.  That won't be an issue for me or anyone else
criticizing Biden's incompetent policies.

Our system is not designed to ensure that everything that the President wants is what we get.  In view of Donald Trump, that is a good thing. We have division of power, checks and balances, enumerated rights, competitive elections, and the rule of law -- all of which Donald Trump has sought to circumvent. For that he must lose, and I would say this even if he had an agenda compatible with mine. 

Quote:It's true that I do favor Trump over Biden, but that's because Trump
is a much better manager than Biden.  Trump's management of the Wuhan
Coronavirus pandemic has been outstanding.  He got vaccines and
therapeutics developed in a few months that normally (or under Obama
or Biden) would have taken years.  Trump was even congratulated at
times by the governors of NY and California.

Donald Trump has effectively appeased an invader which has already killed 235,000 people in America. Figure how much America hated Osama bin Laden for killing about a hundredth as many people in America on September 11. Barack Obama ended up whacking Osama bin Laden, and for that he is a hero. He has encouraged Americans to risk their lives to have a vibrant economy. Sure, but we have lost 235,000 people. That is more than four times the military and custody deaths Americans in combat in either Korea or Vietnam and twice the deaths of America in combat in the First World War. We have surpassed the Union death toll of the American Civil War and are approaching the American death toll of World War II. 
American deaths by the Union side ended as the last slaves were freed in the former Confederacy, and by the time America had lost 235,000 soldiers American armed forces were already emancipating plenty of slaves in Nazi Germany and in the Thug Japanese Empire.

I was not around when Americans hated Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo, but I can only imagine what Americans of the time thought of them. I was born slightly more than ten years after victorious partisans ventilated Mussolini with gunfire and strung him up upside down and when Hitler blew out his brains in a fetid bunker... and a little more than seven years after  an Allied judgment commission hanged Tojo. I would probably feel the same way had I been born thirty years later. SARS-2 (the name of the virus that has killed so many Americans during the last eight months) is as much an enemy of the American People as were Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo. Trump has bungled the response and taken revenge upon people who have urged more effective responses (and made them) than he. 

We have a war with severe casualties, but no Medals of Honor. Were I to give a commendation to Trump it would be a badge of disgrace.

Quote:The major example of Obama's management "skills" was his management of
the development of the Obamacare disaster.  As I've written many
times, what happened on the afternoon of October 1, 2013, was that
President Obama stood up at a press conference to launch Obamacare.
He did so without the vaguest clue that the Healthcare.gov web site
had been a disaster for hours.  It was a total farce, and Obama made a
complete fool out of himself.  As I wrote in my 2015 analytical
article, Obamacare was a Rube Goldberg invention filled with massive
corruption, criminality and incompetence.  Obama had thrown something
like $900 million dollars at a $50 million problem and assumed that no
management was required.  That's how stupid and incompetent Obama was.

No law and no program, or even technology, is perfect. Anyone who fails to expect unforeseen and unwelcome consequences is a fool. 

Quote:If Trump had been in charge of Obamacare development, he would have
handled it the way he handled the pandemic.  He would have provided
only $30 million instead of over $500 million, until more was needed,
and he would have been on the phone every day to the consulting firms
to make sure that development was on time.  On the morning of
October 1, 2013, Trump would have known exactly what the status was,
rather than making a fool out of himself like Obama.

Trump would have made it a corrupt profits-first system that first generates profits and gets at most mediocre results. People would be paying far more for medical costs as Trump would guarantee monopoly profits and mandate that people work longer and harder for less so that they could enrich the owners and executives in a monstrously-corrupt system. It may be a good thing for America that Donald Trump is less competent than someone like Fidel Castro in achieving his dreams!

Quote:Just to take one example that I discussed in my 2015 article.  CGI
Corp. was responsible for the Massachusetts web site.  Obama gave them
$200 million, even though it was really only a $10 million project.
CGI Corp saw its job as finding ways to spend $200 million.  They
hired programmers who couldn't even write a memo, let alone a computer
program.  They defrauded the government by faking test results and
lying about deadlines.  They fired the one whistleblower who
complained about what was going on.  On Oct 1, 2013, nothing worked.
Another firm had to take over, and all of CGI's code had to be thrown
out as worthless garbage.  $200 million had been wasted on nothing.
Trump would never let anything like that happen, but that's standard
fare for Obama's corruption and incompetence.

As if you didn't realize. $200 million is a drop in the bucket of the federal treasury, and the system develops moral outrage only when someone gets corrupt gain from some scam against the Federal government. So it is with such things as electoral campaigns, bribes, and issues under government regulation. 

Quote:Even worse, Obamacare confiscated over $716 billion in the Medicare
insurance fund to provide funding for Obamacare entities.  This is
money that workers have been paying into the fund for decades, and now
it's all gone.  That's criminal incompetence.

Will Biden/Kamala be as incompetent as Obama?  I don't know.

Quote:(ignore)

For an assessment of how objective historians rate the President, see this. Donald Trump so far doesn't impress the historians. Obama comes up as above-average, Dubya as below average, and Clinton about average. 

Quote:I haven't mentioned foreign policy, but Obama appointed that
ridiculous clown John Kerry to be secretary of state, and we watched
(and I documented) as he stumbled from one disaster to the next.  By
contrast, Trump has managed the situations with North Korea and China
very well, forcing them to live up to their commitments, rather than
just letting the commitments slide as Clinton, Bush and Obama did, and
Trump has also gotten three Arab countries to sign peace deals with
Israel, which Obama never could.  But hey!  Obama got the Nobel
Peace Prize.  That's what's important, isn't it?

I concur that John Kerry was a poor choice, and we are only lucky that nothing imploded. Your assessment of how Donald Trump has dealt with North Korea, China, and (you didn't say Russia) will be repudiated under a Biden administration. 

Quote:Will Biden/Kamala have any foreign policy skills?  I don't know.

Probably not the gullible duffer that Trump is. 

Quote:There's an ironic result of the Democrats' illegal spying on the
Trump campaign.  Mueller spent tens of millions of dollars paying
his gang of Democrats to investigate Trump, and after three years
they found nothing.  All they did was prove that Trump is probably
the most honest president in the history of the country.

Republicans used power from lockstep obedience to rescue Donald Trump from an impeachment and removal that he so clearly deserved. But don't worry: we have our own impeachment and removal trial, by American voters, and we will see most of the results tonight.
 

Quote:Are Biden/Kamala honest?  We already know that Biden is a crook,
and that Kamala does what AOC tells her to do.

Donald Trump is a crook, and like most crooks he obeys his appetites, greed, impulse, haughty ego, and anger over all else. 

Quote:So you've had it easy for the last four years.  Just sit back and make
truly idiotic comments about Trump, calling him Hitler and Milosevic
and such, and repeat everything that the shithead Adam Schiff says,
but if Biden wins then you'll have to defend his criminality and
incompetence, which will be a lot harder for you.

Did you see me defending Harvey Weinstein? I made plenty of jokes about former Congressman William "Cold Cash" Jefferson for being caught with bribe money in a freezer. Don't worry: should Joe Biden be as incompetent in dealing with COVID-19 as Trump is, then I will call him on it. I expect, so far, to keep wearing a mask in public until 2022. 

Quote:I, on the other hand, can just criticize one idiotic Biden failure
after another.  So who's the lucky person now?

I have an idea.  Why don't you start a new forum thread: "Let's
make fun of Biden while we still can, before he goes to jail
or dies of dementia"?

You will be more effective starting a new forum thread: "Let's make fun of Bill Cosby while we still can".

Oh... rape isn't funny? That is the point.