The Maelstrom of Violence

[pbrower2a]

(09-20-2017, 02:13 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: I can agree that people who have been subjected to a lifetime of propaganda need more than one exposure to new ideas, but it isn't just the red-state (or blue-state) that features a propaganda system that leaves one values locked.  For many, it takes a lot more than a few exposures to get an open mind.  (I assume you two have lost count?)  To a large degree, you are saying the same thing about each other, and it is greatly true.  The problem is real, and nobody has a wide enough vision and large enough group resolve to solve it.

But people in central and southeastern Europe generally did not need long to reject Marxism-Leninism, a system that inundates people with propaganda.

Quote:As to the immediate problem, welfare can do only so much when the minimum wage prevents a living wage.  I'd like to see welfare as an emergency measure to hold somebody over a troubled time once, but it is being turned into a way of life by a system that promotes more profits for the already wealthy.  These are parts of the same problem.  Of course, it is easy for the already wealthy to claim it isn't their problem.

The gig economy ensures that people will go from ill-paid work to poverty and back to ill-paid work frequently. Steady employment is no longer an objective of our economic order. Going from one sort of work to another (let us say from resort work to agricultural work to construction) is possible, but the sort of person who can do that would be a highly-desirable long-term employee in many places due to flexibility of abilities and of physical fitness. If there were steady work.

Quote:And that leads back to a political system where those who can buy the best lawyers, lobbyists, media people and politicians make the rules.  That will take a lot of people getting angry to fix.  The questions include how many, how soon, and how angry.

Donald Trump found the anger, but he had no viable solutions.

I will say this of the "red" states of the South: they have swung from conservative epochs to populist epochs in the past, and without obvious indications of doing so. Is anyone certain that the "New South" that gave America such types as Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and John Edwards will not return?

Quote:We shall now return to our abstract philosophical discussion of maybe True Believers needing to see the key problem as more important than the value of human life.

Let us remember that the best defense against the fanatic is the principle that human life is precious even if it has obvious differences  such as hooked noses, an epicanthic fold, or above-average melanin content. Or that it has a different theology. To Hell with Stalinists, Nazis, and ISIS!