(07-22-2017, 07:49 AM)Kinser79 Wrote: There is so much wrong with your thinking I sometimes don't know where to start PBR. Fortunately for me, I know you're values locked anyway and my goal here is to point out how flawed your positions are to others.
Some values deserve to be locked. Some values deserve to be locked up.
Quote:PBR Wrote:If the Silent and Progressives are any indication, then we will see them go from a feather-my-nest mode of behavior to finding meaning in life, aligning themselves first with a Civic generation (GI) or one that ends up in a Civic role (the Gilded) only to find younger Idealists (Missionaries and then Boomers) as fresh breezes of intellectual freedom.
Possible. But only if the pattern holds. And if we use the GIs and Gilded as models for the future behavior of civic generations they will move right too. As for the coming new prophets, they aren't being born yet so I'm going to with hold judgement as to their attitudes just yet. That being said having the west move left since the 1930s it is time for a reversal, and naturally this means a move right. It is my goal to die sometime before the nextdementiaawaking sets in.
Suffice it to say, that at current the Zeds, late Millies and of course Xers of all stripes are moving right.
But their conservatism will be above all else the defense of institutions that they found necessary for creating what they consider a livable world. Secondarily it will be a defense of a culture that appears increasingly stale and unimaginative -- which will create a problem. Boomers have not been particularly creative (where is our Walt Whitman or Jean Sibelius?).. but maybe the next Idealist generation will be. Millennials will have created the means and the temperament. They will want a world better for their kids than the one that they knew themselves. Few people would like to inflict the sort of world that the GIs knew upon any current children. But that comparatively hardscrabble world that GI kids knew made GIs what they became.
Quote:Quote:I see a leader like Donald Trump as the sort who makes a rebellion a certainty for anyone who has a conscience and an intellect.
As I told my Boomer mother who was incensed that a former "Bernie Bro" went over to Trump and ditched the Democratic Party altogether (I've recently changed my affiliation--mostly because it was convenient) I personally don't care if he fixes the country or burns it to the ground. Either would be progress.
...and I expect to see multitudes complaining that Donald Trump's conveniently-ambiguous slogan "Make America Great Again" really means "Make America Great Again, but only for elites.
Quote:Quote:His managerial style is despotic.
That is typical of presidents that are doers rather than talkers. He's not the first to be called a despot either, so he's in good company with the likes of Lincoln and your beloved FDR.
One talks first to sort things out, and not simply to announce how wonderful one is. Donald Trump is the shallowest person to be President since at least Warren G. Harding.
Quote:Quote:His Presidency acts more like a royal court than like the Brain Trust of FDR.
So what. Provided he gets the vast majority of his agenda done he will be a successful president. Considering the last three presidents got very little accomplished perhaps a change in management style is necessary.
Stalin achieved a great industrialization with a climate of dehumanizing fear. The Hitler gang was successful in reshaping German culture. And lets not forget that the great expansion of American economic life from the Tidewater region to Texas might have been impossible without chattel slavery. Sometimes the means discredit the objectives.
Democracy exists to ensure that people can contemplate the consequences of the means.
Quote:Quote:"Hispanic" is more about culture than about race
Agreed. Why then do you continue to use it as a racial designation rather than a linguistic one? .
Also it is not a cultural designation either. Peruvian culture is very distinct from Cuban culture which is distinct from Argentine culture. All of them are likely Hispanic (as would be a Spaniard) as the lingua franca in each of those countries is Spanish, but they are clearly not from the same culture.
In attempting to appear not-racist you expose yourself as the ignorant lefty bigot you are.
I think that we all know this. Canada is not New Zealand is not Australia is not England is not the USA is not Jamaica or several other Anglophone islands of the Caribbean. America is arguably the least English of them all, for obvious reasons.
Yes, I am a bigot -- about racism, child abuse, drugs, and personal violence. I hate them as much as a neo-Nazi hates you. But I have legitimate objects of hatred.
Quote:Quote:Self-inflicted harm. Gross under-investment in public health, education, and infrastructure -- that will get bad results no matter what the ethnic heritage. When the coal-mining industry dominated the local economy there were plenty of well-paying jobs, and the Democratic politicians in West Virginia could operate a bare-bones government with low taxes and few services,. Once those jobs vanished, all that remained was people who had to leave to improve their lives. Guess what is left!
So, your argumentation is that the problems these states have is either a result of lacking a high tax, high regulation business environment (like sayCommieforniaCalifornia which people are fleeing in droves), or that the lowest of the bottom feeders remained after the jobs dried up. Either way you're blaming the very same people who are most oppressed (in your view) for being oppressed.
I'm not terribly surprised by this. I'll chalk it up to your perennial snobbery. It is an affliction you share with many others who remain in the Democratic Party.
What applies to coal in Kentucky and West Virginia applies also, if to a lesser degree, with the automotive industry in Michigan. What saves Michigan is a stronger agricultural industry. You may not know it, but Michigan has one of the biggest wine industries in America. Besides, Michigan has the headquarters of Post and Kellogg's. The agriculture industry and the automotive industry were at odds over priorities in Michigan, which allowed for political competition as did not exist in West Virginia, where the Republicans were the mine owners and the Democrats were the miners. (OK, that is an oversimplification). The mine owners still have the money and the miners are losing their jobs. Democrats really messed up in West Virginia as they didn't in Michigan.
Quote:Quote:Middle-class blacks still face racism
No they don't. Being a "middle class" (I'm going to take that mean middle income since I've explained class to you thousands of times already and you still don't get it that the amount of monoply money in your bank account doesn't matter) and black myself I've never faced racism. Or I should say, I've never faced it on a systemic level and almost never at the hands of whites. Indeed the largest amount of racism I've experienced is from other blacks who have a problem with me "acting white" by which they mean speaking correctly, holding down a job, taking care of my kids.
Indeed I've experienced far more homophobia than I have racism. Again at the hands of other blacks, as opposed to whites or any other group.
Indeed the fact that there are high income, and middle income blacks demonstrates how not-racist the US actually is. Granted the majority of blacks are poor, but so is the majority of whites and latinos. And for that matter the majority period.
Yes, bigotry -- from the sorts of people who believed the claptrap of "Make America Great Again" without asking questions like "for whom?" President Trump loves his 'low-information voters"... and racists are usually low-information people. Such people often see blacks only as ghetto thugs or, like Jesse Jackson or Barack Obama, hucksters pimping for welfare for something that rhymes with the name of Roy Rogers' horse.
"Acting white?" Heaven forbid that "acting white" means being shallow enough to see nothing wrong with President Trump. I'd encourage many white people that I know to act more like Overseas Chinese.
Oh, yes -- homophobia is inexcusable, and I generally associate it with stupid people. The sorts of people who think that I am gay because I don't exude aggressive masculinity? I may be a sissy by their standards... but "Men.... yuck!"
Quote:Quote:I have a knack for sizing people up for intelligence and learning very quickly.
If this is true, then you should already understand that there is a diversity of outcomes because there is a diversity of skills, abilities and intelligence. Yet, you want to stick to the leftist narrative of oppression. Honestly I don't know if this is due to a lack of intelligence on your part, or because it is psychologically comforting to you because it means you never have to take responsiblity for the outcomes that have happened in your own life. After all you still blame your parents for a whole host of shit and my understanding is that you've been over 18 for quite a while now.
A 20 year old blaming his parents for X, Y, and Z is far more understandable than a 60 year old doing the same. It's sad really but my 17 y/o seems more mature than you. Could be generational though--I say the same of my mother at times.
They gave me some very bad advice because they had no idea of how to handle me. I was a good, placid kid for a Boomer, someone who adopted adult behavior early. No drugs, no run-ins with the law, no drinking problems, no lust for vehicular speed, and a well-constrained sex drive, and did well in school. What could possibly go wrong? ... Undiagnosed Asperger's. Once I got into the adult world I had troubles with understanding non-verbal communications and in office politics. It even crippled my achievement in college.
Maybe I was too good at certain things for my own good.
Quote:Quote:U-N-I-O-N-S. Strong, militant, welfare-oriented unions ensured that someone who did a labor job for a giant employer could not be underpaid just for being black. Now that unions are practically dead, we have economic elites who treat everyone not among them very badly.
You mean those very unions which lead to over priced labor and eventual off shoring. Honestly I think we would have been better off had they never existed.
And the glories of exploitation of the working class by employers who see workers as livestock to be exploited or vermin to be crushed leads to... as a former Marxist you should know where that leads. Marxism is irrelevant to healthy societies that don;t need a secret police to crush resentment of a brutal and exploitative social order like the one that Donald Trump stands for.
Quote:Quote:By the way -- I was in Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina in April. Key attractions were Mammoth Cave and Great Smoky Mountains National Park
Congratulations, you left the house to visit these states to see not very interesting tourist traps. Having lived in those states for extended periods of time I think I have a greater grasp on their problems and the causes of those problems than you do. Honestly if I could make a living up there I'd pack up and leave. The BF can basically get a job in any state that has schools and since that means all of them that isn't a limitation.
At least I didn't brag about going to Vegas or Reno.
Quote:Quote:I'm taking the dog so that I can see how it reacts.
As a long time owner of dogs he is unlikely to react to an eclipse of the sun. Their consciousness is not as complex as a human's.
Unlike us diurnal predators helpless at night, dogs fare about equally well as diurnal or nocturnal predators. By day we are as deadly as lions; by night we are lion food. A burglar at night facing even a medium-sized dog is in deep trouble with an animal that has much in common with Big Cats in abilities if not its usual behavior. A hint: I once saw a televised circus, and the dog act and the tiger act were much the same in what the animals did. The dog act was for comic effect. The tiger act was to awe us. I have seen some very tiger-like behavior from dogs.
So maybe it will be slight for the dog. But I would need to take the dog along for the ride, even if it is 'only' to southern Illinois, western Kentucky, or the Nashville metro area.
By the way -- have you ever seen a total eclipse of the sun? How do you know how dogs would act in the presence of one? For most people it is a once-in-a-lifetime event. It will be a twice-in-a-lifetime event if I am around in 2025 because I will need go only to Ohio.
Quote:I'm getting a passport so that I can visit a free country. Canada.
If you want a free country you're already in the freest one. I say that as someone whose been to many countries in my time in the Navy. I can categorically state that the USA is the last best hope for Humanity.[/quote]
Once America rejects Donald Trump and government by lobbyist you will be right. Sometimes America must learn some lessons (like never elect a demagogue) the hard way.
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.