08-30-2021, 08:10 PM
(08-30-2021, 01:16 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: ** 30-Aug-2021 World View: Adam Schiff and the mass slaughter of blacks
(08-27-2021, 07:04 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: > What a collection of delusional verbiage!
(08-27-2021, 07:48 AM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: > ** 27-Aug-2021 World View: Trollery
> Lol! So, are you also an Adam Schiff troll, or are you someone
> else's troll?
I'd like to expand on my previous answer.
Every policy, no matter how good or bad, has unintended consequences.
In fact, the size of the unintended consequences is one measure of how
bad a policy is. And a measure of how good or bad the policymakers
are is to see how well they take action to reverse the unintended
consequences.
In our system it is not normally the policy-makers within the Administration who take action to reverse or mitigate the unintended consequences that come out badly. Most people are blinded to their economic ideology, moral concerns, and foreign policy; they recognize their virtues to excess and trivialize the flaws. That is human nature. I'm not sure that we want a computer or a machine-like mind (with Asperger's I am nearly that, so I would be a disaster as President). We do not do government by algorithm. If the previous Administration is fairly good, then the right course might be some fine tuning. Example: Bill Clinton fully endorsed the general position of George HW Bush on foreign policy. Eventually there would be some slight modifications, mostly to reflect change in realities that happened during the Clinton Presidency. What Clinton did change was on domestic policy, which was warmed-over Reagan. Twelve years is ordinarily more than enough for one agenda.
The historical assessment of the elder Bush was not that he was a truly God-awful President; it was instead that his domestic policy had gotten stale.
Ideally one endorses the virtues and rejects the faults of the predecessor. If one is Barack Obama one must reject the economic policies that led to the financial panic of 2008, the result of a speculative boom that did what all speculative booms do: it devoured capital and made the economy dependent upon it for any semblance of prosperity. Of course he rescued the financial system as Herbert Hoover failed to do. He had no graceful exit from Iraq and Afghanistan until in the case of Iraq he had to make US troops subject to Iraqi law. Obama is about as conservative as one gets on law and order, perhaps recognizing a lesson that he learned as a community organizer. Most people in the poorest parts of town are good people, and crime is mostly the result of offenders who do not stop committing street crime until they are in prison. Criminal behavior is a personal choice and not a consequence of economic distress. Finding the trustworthy people in the South Side of Chicago implies that those people will tell someone that they trust that such-and-such person is a violent criminal who preys mostly on fellow poor people. South Side crooks do not commute to Naperville (a well-off suburb) to commit crimes.
I see Obama and I see far more virtues than vices. I also see a savvy pol. People who expected him to have a soft spot for rogues just because those rogues are black are wrong. All in all most historical assessments of Obama as President are that he is better than average among Presidents. Trying to see him from a conservative or libertarian view all that was wrong with him is that he was not a conservative or libertarian. I also see him as a model, at least in behavior and political skills, for the next conservative President who has an agenda of paring down Big Government to promote responsibility (Create wealth first before you participate in the consumer society, dammit!), thrift, sobriety, integrity, and enterprise. The Left has found Big Government good for creating a welfare state by making welfare profitable for merchants, medical professionals, and landlords. The Right has found Big Government useful for enforcing the will of monopolies and cartels and for sweetheart deals between Big Government and well-connected plutocrats.
Eight years of a fairly good President are not to be completely cast off. The big problem with Donald Trump arises in his hatred of Barack Obama that caused Trump to undo everything that Obama did, which means rejecting even his virtues. The opposite of fairly-good is of course "hideous". The only good thing about Trump was that he was too inept to achieve much of his agenda. Trump is excellent at inflammatory rhetoric that stokes mass resentments among people who think that they have been left behind because they see members of minority groups doing far better than they. The fault with that is that it solves nothing. Trump is steadfast in his beliefs even if those prove wrong. At that he is no better than people who wear shirts emblazoned with images of Che Guevara or have (I have seen this) the words WHITE POWER tattooed onto their knuckles.
Quote:But sometimes the policymakers fail to take any actions to reverse the
unintended consequences. Even worse, someimes instead of fixing them,
the policymakers adopt new policies that reinforce or worsen the
unintended consequences. Once the "unintended consequences" are not
fixed, but go on and worsen for years, then it becomes appropriate to
call them "intended consequences," especially when the policymakers
have obvious motives for wanting the intended consequences.
To this I might point you toward the Skowronek cycle. The creator of this site refers more to the work of a political scientist with no obvious partisan bias than to partisan politics. One must be a partisan hack to still believe that Donald Trump was incompetent at anything other than making inflammatory rhetoric that further divided America. Donald Trump, in view of his personal character and minimal preparation to be President would have been a calamitous President had he been a boilerplate liberal.
In essence, the President who enters at the start of one cycle (prime examples are Jackson, Lincoln, FDR, and Reagan... maybe Teddy Roosevelt) become President despite widespread misgivings, get better results than even critics expected, and reset the political norms. They get better-than-expected results in public policy. Legitimate achievements overpower unintended consequences. But setting the norm they ensure that later imitators become increasingly ineffective because the obvious solutions are already in place and can change little... but unintended consequences become more severe and hazardous. After forty to forty-eight years or so, even a smart President of integrity and intelligence (nobody ever accused either Buchanan, Hoover, or Carter "stupid", "corrupt", or "cruel"). Fine-tuned solutions that worked 35 to 45 years earlier no longer have the intended effects.
OK, Trump is "stupid", "corrupt", and "cruel", which makes him worse.
Quote:For decades, the Democrats have adopted policies to destroy black
families, by forcing black mothers to throw their children's fathers
out of the house and into the street and out of the community in order
to collect welfare. For decades, the Democrats have manipulated
welfare policy to destroy black families as much as possible, and
today 75% of black children are born without fathers. The result is
that these children without the moral and experiential guidance of
their fathers, causing many of them to enter the criminal justice
system. Furthermore, teen boys know that, thanks to the Democrat's
welfare policies, they have no hope of having a normal family life,
because they know that if they marry and have children, their wives
will throw them out of the house as soon as they're short of money.
I'm sure that many of those fathers would not be welcome if they tried to put together a nuclear family. Add to this, many of the mothers are themselves suspect. I've known of some white women in rural areas who see their babies as cash cows for welfare payments.
On the other hand, blacks have been making gains in economic reality as some get more rigorous education and develop vocational skills. That applies to women just as much as to men. You can fault the mass low culture all that you want for promoting consumerism over enterprise and toil and for lacking any intellectual value. This same low culture that retards blacks who imbibe excessively in it also has much appeal to white youth.
Need I tell you that poverty itself usually comes with economic insecurity? The jobs that poor people end up with typically pay minimal wages, offer no solid career ladder, have capricious management, and have frequent lay-offs. Running out of money is easy, even without job loss, if one makes some economic blunder such as trusting a con artist or such a calamity as a medical emergency or a shady arrest.
Quote:The result is that these rudderless young black males with no fathers
and with no hope of a family life, thanks to Democrats' policies, are
out on the streets killing each other in record numbers in cities
governed by Democrats. Democrats could fix these problems (by
following the example of Rudy Guliani's tenure in NYC, for example),
but they refuse to do so, indicating that mass slaughter of blacks on
the streets is an "intended consequence" of Democrats' policies.
The "explosion" of welfare payments coincides with the disappearance of large numbers of industrial jobs that black men often ended up with by default. The factory was the most reliable escape from grinding poverty, more so for more people than were formal education. Americans started buying more foreign cars and Big Business started buying more imported steel, which alone mean lower industrial output; furthermore the big manufacturers of all kinds found ways in which to automate plants and need smaller payrolls, especially of semi-skilled labor. To be sure, this partly reflects white kids deciding to get college degrees instead of considering a career in factory work (surely you recall public-service ads in the 1960's that told people "to get a good job get a good education". People who get significant college education are completely unsuited to factory work.
You tell me how we get back to the "good old days" in which people of limited education but a solid work ethic could get a well-paying factory job that could support the family.
Quote:The Democrats' motive is perfectly obvious. Last century, Democrats
were conducting mass slaughter of blacks through the KKK. This
century, the Democrats are conducting mass slaughter of blacks through
policies. It's exactly the same objective through different means.
If the KKK had gotten its way it would have done what groups of similar bigotry did: large-scale genocide. Imagine a Holocaust in the USA; the KKK has much the same hatred toward Jews that the Nazis did. The KKK could not threaten a restoration of slavery, in view of the pesky 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, but just imagine what they could have done if they had had the opportunity to repeal them and "free" white people to own slaves. African-Americans refusing the offer of bondage in return for survival would likely be exterminated.
I'm not going to excuse the KKK because it wasn't as bad as Hitlerite or Stalinist rule; one lynching and one bombing by hooded fascists is one too many. Yes, the Second Klan is fascist; it is arguable that the Nazis learned much from it even down to night rallies under torch light, the KKK salute, gaudy symbolism, and "racial laws".
Republicans have practically no appeal in America's poor non-white communities, so administrative default goes to Democrats. I'm guessing that Democrats trust the Black Bourgeoisie to be leaders of poor blacks who have the will and ability to do something good, even if that means 'only' commuting to the suburbs for jobs in retailing and fast food.
Quote:So there are two "intended consequences" of Democrats' policies:
destruction of the black family, and mass slaughter of blacks in the
streets of cities governed by Democrats. After decades of failing to
fix these outcomes, and in fact allowing them to worsen, there is no
doubt that mass slaughter of blacks in the streets is an intended
consequence of Democrat policies. Same as last century, but by
different means.
Two cr@ppy jobs can be a start for a family. Obviously a near-minimum-wage job will not support much participation of someone in the consumer economy unless one is a teenager still living with parents. Maybe if one increases a welfare supplement someone can go from the ghetto to where the jobs are and commute to and from the job. Heck, I was in Greater Detroit one day at the peak time for the morning commute, having dropped someone off at the airport. I expected traffic toward Downtown Detroit, but not the other way. I saw lots of black people obviously commuting to the suburbs. I see no reason to believe that African-Americans have an unusual level of participation in graveyard-shift work.
If you are looking for economic opportunity, you do not go to Greater Detroit.
Quote:Last century, the direct activities of the KKK were pretty much ended
by the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
...and more rigorous law enforcement against segregationist terror, which coincides. More precisely, the most terroristic part of the KKK (the infamous United Klans of America involved in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church and the lynching of Michael Donald) disgraced itself. Other Klans emerged, and by the 1980's those started to unite in purpose with neo-Nazis.
KKK groups have about as many members as do the Communists... and it is safe to say that law enforcement has so heavily infiltrated them that they cannot get away with much.
Quote:The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was bitterly opposed by the Democrats,
especially those in the south. The Democrats staged a 75-day
filibuster, among the longest in American history. On one occasion,
Senator Robert Byrd spoke for over 14 consecutive hours.
Fifty-seven years ago. What is the relevance? Segregationism is dead as a political cause. D-E-A-D. Neither Party has a segregationiut wing.
Quote:This bitter opposition by Byrd is significant because Byrd had been a
Grand Wizard in the KKK, and Byrd was the mentor of Joe Biden. This
provides a solid connection between the KKK of the last century and
the Democrats of today.
No. Just no.
Quote:After their bitter defeat, the Democrats began aggressively pushing
welfare policies that destroyed the black family.
See what I said of the disappearance of factory jobs upon which African-American men heavily replied upon for work since the time of Booker T. Washington, who advocated that black men seek and do industrial work. Black men were going to face discrimination, but they were going to experience it less in the bourgeoning industrial sector than elsewhere (such as commerce and clerical work). The professions in which African-Americans could work were already over-saturated (there would not be opportunities to serve the white population).
Quote:I have a personal memory of this from the 1970s. Every day I would
read in the Boston Globe of how the welfare policies worked. Vans
were sent into black neighborhoods for a period of many months. Any
woman simply had to walk out of her home and walk into the van in
front of her home to sign up for welfare on the spot, provided that
she said that her children weren't being supported by their father.
So the government was paying mothers to disavow their children's
fathers, with no limitations. That was the first step in destroying
the black family.
The policy got much worse, as the welfare policy evolved to crack down
on mothers who were receiving welfare, but still had the father living
with them. They were required to throw the fathers out of the house,
or lose their welfare.
Then there was a crackdown on fathers who still were around their
families. I recall stories of mothers losing welfare because dad was
still in the neighborhood. The message was clear: get rid of dad
completely.
Next, the authorities completely closed the noose around fathers. The
government implemented large data processing systems to track down
fathers, mostly black fathers, who could be found. The message to
women was clear: Have sex with several men, so that the father can't
be identified, if you want to continue received welfare payments; make
sure you don't hang around with the father(s) of your children or,
better yet, make sure you don't even know who the father is.
It's incredible how successful the Democrats have been. They turned
their bitter defeat in 1964 into feel-good policies that completely
destroy black families, and continue the mass slaughter of blacks into
the 21st century.
In the 1960s, Patrick Moynihan warned that these would be unintended
consequences of Democrat policies. But since the policies have gone
on for decades, and have worsened, it's clear that they're now
"intended consequences." This is what the Democrats want.
1960's and 1970's. The OP has had plenty of opportunity in which to undo or mitigate those policies. Like most Democrats today I consider family cohesion a generally good idea unless some compelling reason (like abuse in a relationship) counter-indicates such a policy. This said, the black bourgeoisie is still heavily Democratic, and (much unlike the white bourgeoisie that leans Republican) cares about it own poor. At this point I must ask white people why they seem not to give a damn about poor white people in the Mountain and Deep South.
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.
