The Maelstrom of Violence

[pbrower2a]

(01-11-2021, 05:05 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(01-11-2021, 11:27 AM)gabrielle Wrote: The American people have voted to give control of the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives to the Democrats. Georgia has turned blue, and the "Squad" is growing. In the aftermath of the thwarted insurrection, the president is facing a second impeachment. White House officials are abandoning ship, and several Republicans have joined in calling for his impeachment. Trump has been banned permanently from twitter and facebook, and parler is offline. Trump's approval ratings with the public have long been poor. Those who fomented rebellion in Congress are losing their major donors and facing heavy censure. Those who participated in the assault of the Capitol are being hunted down and arrested, with many of them making excuses and pleading mercy.

I don't know, Classic Xer, it looks to me like it is your side that is losing.

Aren't you the one who is giving up on politics and going back to focusing on art?

Uh, typically the electoral politics goes into hibernation when the last vote is decided. Then comes what people vote about -- administering the government apparatus and legislating to make the laws that (ideally) make a better universe in which we live. For those who decide that they want to be re-elected (and political power that goes with elective office, I have heard, is only about as addictive as heroin) the next two to six years is about doing things that get one re-elected.  

Quote:Looks can be deceiving, we are a 50/50 nation

until one Party disgraces itself with incompetence, corruption, or abuse of power 

Quote:with one vote being the deciding factor with violence on the table and viewed as an option by both sides.

My side, I assure you, does not want violence. If someone does violence or disrupts lawful process, then I expect the legal and penal systems to do their work. My side can give polished answers on the question of why violence is unacceptable. 

Quote:If you look at the current political situation and use some imagination, you can see a nation that's positioned for war. Are you aware of all that it took for the Democratic party and some GOP to defeat Donald Trump?

Elections are not war and are not means of deciding who the enemies are. Plenty of conservatives now recognize Donald Trump for the dangerous, unprincipled, vindictive, dishonest, ruthless demagogue that he is -- and in the last few days they have come to recognize him as the wannabe dictator that he showed signs of being that liberals saw earlier. At this point it does not matter whether one saw him as such before he was elected or after he made such a complete ... I was about to say "horse's ass", but at least without the literal equine derriere a horse isn't going anywhere or doing anything useful... after the election this man is completely unfit to be President!   I don't want him wielding the nuclear football or having access to information at any level of classification. If I were a physician I would not trust him with access to confidential medical records because he would exploit them for gain or gratification. (Medical records are privileged enough that anyone who gets unauthorized access through deliberate or reckless actions faces prison time. Medical ethics require prosecution of anyone who breaches the security of medical records).

Quote:Lets see, it several months of on going violence and covid restrictions, a continuous fear campaign that was waged for several months by the media, illegal court decisions in some key states battle ground states, the assistance of big tech oligarchs controlling relevant information and eliminating voices of decent and political opposition and contributing hundreds of millions dollars and an absent candidate who barely left home who didn't have much to say when asked pertinent and relevant questions relating to known agenda's is what all it took to win the election. 

Wow! How did you learn how to write such an incoherent, logically-stretched piece of prose? Certainly not Freshman Composition at a genuine college. The violence has largely been on Trump's side (we liberals denounce any rioters, vandals, assaulters, and looters even before we protest at something like a Black Lives Matters rally. Contrary to a reactionary myth, we liberals are anything but soft on crime. 

Donald Trump has created much of the cause for fear. COVID-19 has already taken about as many lives as either the population of Bakersfield, California or Cleveland, Ohio... more than six times the combat death toll of unpopular wars in Korea or Vietnam. Our Coward-in-Chief has appeased a murderous invader once we have been taking a death toll resembling a very bad war. If Americans nationwide had taken the measures that my state, three states with land borders, and the two that have borders in lakes (Illinois and Minnesota) then the death tolls would be far lower than they are. Instead governors of Iowa, Nebraska, and South Dakota chose to open their states to tourist dollars... and made their states nexuses for the spread of COVID-19. This is not a partisan swipe; I commend the Republican governors of Indiana and Ohio who shut down their states as tightly as mine. There have been times in which I have been all dressed up with no place to go except for a grocery store, hardware store, teller or take-out window, or medical clinic. That's one way to keep people from traveling and spreading the disease. 

Technological oligarchs controlling information? They can't squelch this:

The Communist Manifesto

[url=https://unabombermanifesto.com/]The "Unabom" Manifesto

[/url]    

Quote:Right now, we are a fascist Democratic country more than an American country without a trustworthy referee who is able to keep peace.

"fascist Democratic" is an oxymoron. That's not to say that everything that calls itself democratic is democratic; just think of the self-proclaimed "People's Democratic Republic of Korea" in which the Korean people have no meaningful say about their government, which is not at all a republic (it is for all practical purposes an absolute monarchy)... well it is in the northern part of Korea and not somewhere else in the world. The ideology in which I believe, which is humanistic, liberal democracy, is not unique to America.  Your idea of America sounds like one in which I would be completely welcome -- to a torture chamber, killing site, or slave-labor camp. Such I do not welcome.  

Quote:Yes, the Democratic side won but look at the position that the Democrats are in right now and look at how many freedoms and rights that the Democratic side has lost. We aren't three years into a crisis like Hoover and the Republican party was in 80 some years ago. The situation now is reversed I don't know where you live or much care for that matter. I don't know if fascism and plutocracy and master class determining who you are, what your worth, what you have to believe and accept was what you wanted or expected or not but that's what you got and you've been stuck with right now. How long will America go along with this arrangement? Well, I can't speak for seventy some million individuals who have the right to wage  war with a fascist regime and are here to do just that with some of  God's help of coarse.

The times are changing, as we see evidence of approach of the end of a Crisis Era. There will be new rules, formal and otherwise, in life and most people will accept them because they seem right. If I have any analogy, I look at the two Obama terms for their place in history much more like the first two terms of FDR as a partial recovery from a dangerous economic downturn. Obama may have been less effective in getting and retaining political power of the sort that FDR did. (The rich and powerful had the means with which to buy political support in elections, and those rich-and-powerful people promoted the sorts of people who firmly believe that no human suffering can ever be in excess in the name of profit and the indulgence of its fruits).

An economic elite that can consign people to poverty because such is best for profit, should it lack moral qualms against such, will create poverty as a means of controlling those who do the work. These people can fire you if you gripe or fail to smile. 

Donald Trump is the worst vehicle possible for this ideology because he is such an objectionable person. Maybe he is simply less competent than a Ronald Reagan. Voters in Reagan's time accepted the deal when it was new. Voters reject it now that it is stale.  

Quote:Did you see what all it took and how many wrongs were ignored for the Democratic party and some GOP to barely defeat Trump? I know several people who have been banned or had their posts deleted by Facebook and Twitter recently. One happened the other day during a discussion between a Biden supporter and a Trump supporter. The Trump supporter had their rights taken away before the eyes of the Biden supporter. So, who gave Facebook the power to do that in this country. The Democrats are making a big mistake right now. The GOP (Northeastern Wing) has no other choice but to go along with whatever the Democrats want to do right now because they supported Biden. Does that sound right, nice or seem American to you?

Facebook and Twitter are both free-enterprise entities! Much of the content is the sort that used to be offered as letters-to-the-editor in local newspapers. Incendiary, slanderous, libelous, illucid, and commercial messages get rejected. The editor can pare away irrelevancy at will. 

If we Democrats are making mistakes, then those are forced errors in which principle traps them. 

Quote:Here's the deal, we are being nice right now and we are waiting to see what the Democrats do with the power that a remnant of a group associated with a bygone era who are old and senile and on the verge of dying off gave them. Biden represents them. What you see here is child's play compared to what could begin to happen all over this country? I do not believe Americans voted for a fascist regime like the one that we clearly have in place today. I don't believe American voted to have their individual rights/freedoms taken away by Progressive courts. I don't believe Americans voted voted for a socialist system. I don't believe Americans voted to remove police funding and further weaken their authority either.

The generational cycle suggests that we are past due for the equivalent of a New Deal or are about due for a Marshall Plan. I'd love to see a Marshall Plan against something un-American: grinding poverty. As for fascism, Trump acts more like a fascist dictator than any prior President and much less than Biden. I'm not sure that you know what fascism means or how a fascist regime operates. 

Fascism has warning signs


   

If this doesn't seem familiar you must not have been in contact with news about the Trump Presidency. 

Quote:We have two countries here right now. We have a Democratic country that wants to change everything to suit its particular needs and keep itself and an American country that's represented by Republicans who are not interested in accommodating them/it or serving their/its  needs that I more or less represent here today. So, I suggest that you prepare to be stuck in between the side associated with the French Revolution (anarchy) and the guillotines and the side associated with the American Revolution and the American establishment as they more or less begin square off with one another like you're seeing here. I have already been through the shit the people  who supported Biden are going to through and be subjected to over the next four years as they learn that Biden and what's left of the old Democratic party has no control over or power to stop much much of anything these days.

We Democrats are no monolith. We are just as "American" as the other side, and many people who have recently been on that other side on most issues of voting have come to recognize Donald Trump for the Frankenstein monster that he is. Fascism is to democracy what a pedophile is to an innocent child. Pedophiles never tell their intended victims that they will feel pain and shame that they can never imagine and that will scar them for life. No, it will be some fun and attention. Fascists never tell people about the reduced wages, brutal management, torture chambers, secret police, slave-labor camps, meat-grinder wars, and death mills. They promise prosperity and national pride and give a People pain and shame that they can never imagine and that will scar them for the rest of their lives. Biden may be old-hat, but sometimes the familiar and predictable is far better than some "new and improved"  that is new only in its awfulness, and whose improvement is suspect.