Kyrsten Synema (D - Az) brings a cake into the Senate to downvote min. wage hike

[David Horn]

(04-17-2021, 06:10 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: ... Getting back to Coca Cola, the American brand of soda pop that I've been buys and drinking since I was a little  kid. Well, mighty old Coke bent its knee to us the other day like they should being they're an American based company and an American icon. It's a subtle sign, but it's a sign of a large corporation giving way to the fittest and the economic power we represent as a group of individuals. Guess what, I told you about our size and the economic power that we represent and that's just based on a thousand dollar contribution to the American cause.

You seem to ignore the inconvenient fact that, purchasing power alone, your side of the equation has less than the other side.  The real money is in the cities.  And just what knee-bending did Coke do, exactly?

[Eric the Green]

(04-18-2021, 11:09 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(04-18-2021, 12:25 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: It depends what is meant by "bubbling up." The Sanders and Warren campaigns were based around the division of wealth problem, and they had large followings because many people (especially young people) are motivated by this issue. We saw this in the Occupy Wall Street movement as well. But this trend doesn't seem to be expressed violently, so far. Yet, the neo-liberal, trickle-down, free-market ideology is the nub and the cause of the current crisis, in all its aspects, and many people are aware of this fact.

I see the COVID and systematic racism issues (including red violence and Jan 6) as rising to the crisis level.  Division of wealth?  Yes, some steps have been taken, but that is not the focus to the degree that it ought to be.  Where were the division of wealth protests last summer?  I suspect COVID and racism will no longer be distractions come the next awakening.  Division of wealth seems to be the next issue up.

But it is on the table now, and politicians know it. It is an existential threat, one among several. And completely tied up with racism and covid. It will be acted upon this 4T, or our nation sinks irretrievably into banana republic status. It's on peoples' minds already, especially young minds. And neo-liberalism is the cause of it. The cure is to overturn it. Biden is taking big strides toward doing it already.

Awakenings are more about culture and spirit than civics. I am not sympathetic to idea that solutions will come up in the next Awakening. That just means that our generations are abdicating their place in the action, especially boomers. Our time is not past. Our time is now. It is not a virtue for us to "get out of the way." Blue Boomers: Speak up!

Late Silent John Lewis spoke up, stood up and made good trouble right to the end of his life. We can do no less.

[pbrower2a]

(04-17-2021, 07:16 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(04-17-2021, 03:04 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(04-17-2021, 01:16 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(04-17-2021, 12:41 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: I'd say that's an illusion associated with money and I'll leave it at that. As far as it flowing in accordance with natural laws, it's pretty much true. The fittest either have or end up with most of it. There are some exceptions, Kamala Harris comes to mind. She must have a magic pussy to get where she is today. You know what a magic pussy is right. I'd say most if not all of the exceptions are directly related to the Democratic party these days.

Us Democrats have a way of seeing that some money flows away from whom you think are the "fittest." So, when we win, we interrupt that flow and steer some of the money away from the "fit" fat cats. So much for "natural flow" eh? Unless the state is pretty "natural" after all. Humans have never been without one. But as for Harris, yes I think she played her feminine assets very well, but I don't know if she is rich. Powerful, maybe a bit.

You must have missed this sentence. "The fittest either have or end up with most of it." Read my post again, you'll see it. I acknowledged that the laws of nature aren't always perfect. I mean, a corporal being granted ultimate authority over generals defies the laws of nature but nature prevailed.

Replace 'fittest' with either 'most aggressive' or 'greedy' if you prefer, but fittest is simply wrong.  Mahatma Gandhi was penniless but more than fit.  He is only one of thousands ... maybe millions.

Moral strength means not needing to indulge oneself, which distinguishes Mohandas Gandhi from those who have their own self-indulgence as an objective. Think of how pathetic it must be to be a crooked hustler like Steve "Caught on a Yacht" Bannon or Don Lapre, a real-estate hustler who allegedly showed people how to get rich in real estate but simply took their money, committed suicide when caught for fraud. Lapre was living some exaggerated Good Life until he faced a not-so-good-life as a long-term denizen of some federal penitentiary. The crookedest politicians of all time, the ones who use their authority to enrich themselves, are abominations. Yes, high political office and senior military rank typically comes with nice  perquisites, but those are privileges necessary for doing the job. 

It may be that the most effective entrepreneurs are so busy creating wealth that they don't get a chance to enjoy it. (It is also possible to create wealth without enjoying the wealth, which one can say of people greatly overworked and underpaid; people terribly overworked and underpaid are creating wealth for people other than themselves. Such is the potential for great inequity within capitalism, and one of the great objections that can arise from capitalism. Maybe such is necessary in the early-industrial era in which skill and productivity are both low and the economic order needs severe exploitation to create wealth in the form of productive capital. In times more clearly modern, when capitalists need a market and the proletariat must become mass consumers as well as toilers, volume makes up for reduced margins of profit. 

Some people are far better at making a contribution than at demanding their due. To ensure that they get their due, they may need a labor union so that they not be exploited egregiously. Let us remember that we still need far more people making the banal stuff and servicing it or making it useful. We need more movie ushers than film stars. We need more people to milk cows than we need dairy owners. We need more people to clean at the universities than we need college professors. Figure that if one is a highly-successful pop musician that one contributes to making jobs for delivery people  and warehouse workers than for fellow musicians, and that if one is a successful author, then much the same is true.  

I don't know where the line is, but an economic order that requires mass suffering to make the wealth of a few possible is still poor. Obscene poverty may be a characteristic of a very poor country that hardly has enough to share, but a country that uses hunger and homelessness to ensure that the masses suffer (which includes hating their very lives) so that the elites have command and control is sick. Slums and sweatshops are evidence of either underdevelopment or a perverse economic order. To be sure, profit is necessary for keeping owners and administrators rational in their behavior (so that pork producers do not feed pork to their pigs, which would violate the economic equivalent of the Second Law of Thermodynamics), choose efficiency over sloth and obsolescence, and heed the desires of customers; even so, some of the means of getting or enhancing a profit can do great harm. Nobody denies that human trafficking and drug dealing are profitable even if such activities are abominations. 

Egregious displays of wealth in the presence of great poverty offend many sensibilities.

[Classic-Xer]

(04-18-2021, 01:01 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(04-17-2021, 06:10 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: ... Getting back to Coca Cola, the American brand of soda pop that I've been buys and drinking since I was a little  kid. Well, mighty old Coke bent its knee to us the other day like they should being they're an American based company and an American icon. It's a subtle sign, but it's a sign of a large corporation giving way to the fittest and the economic power we represent as a group of individuals. Guess what, I told you about our size and the economic power that we represent and that's just based on a thousand dollar contribution to the American cause.

You seem to ignore the inconvenient fact that, purchasing power alone, your side of the equation has less than the other side.  The real money is in the cities.  And just what knee-bending did Coke do, exactly?

The real money isn't located in the cities these days. The cities are mainly transfer points of digital related wealth these days. I have some money located in Wall Street and Silicon Valley right now. I don't know a Republican voter who doesn't have money located in them today. If the real money was mainly located in the cities as you say, the cities wouldn't be as heavily Democratic or as heavily Progressive (Left Wing) as they are today. The fact is the cities are mainly banana republics with some pockets of real wealth these days.

Coca Cola jumped on the Progressive band wagon without thinking about the consequences of being associated with the Progressives and their Marxist/ racist politics. A group of American right wingers gave them a heads up, educated them and Coca Cola decided that it was not in their to continue and find themselves being bankrupted and essentially eliminated from the American market. I prefer the imported Coke from Mexico myself. It's more expensive than regular Coke made from corn syrup. You know the Coke made with real sugar that we drank during the 70's. The Coke that Joe Green guzzled down before he tossed his jersey to the white kid my age who gave it to him to drink. Do you remember the commercial? You do know who Joe Green is right? If not, Joe Green was a famous black football player who played for the famous Steelers back in the 70's. The country was way more racist back then than today. But some how or another, the white supremacist system, or systemic racism as you call it, didn't stop him from succeeding and becoming rich and famous back then, No, he succeeded despite not having any black people associated with the union or management or ownership or coaching staff protecting him, favoring him or looking out for his interests back then. If I was a white supremacist, I would have been very upset. I would have been wondering how an all white system controlled by white people failed to stop him from entering and succeeding like he did and failed to stop Jesse Owens from doing it too long before Joe Green and Barrack Obama were born and became rich and famous as well.

[Bob Butler 54]

(04-18-2021, 01:13 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(04-18-2021, 11:09 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(04-18-2021, 12:25 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: It depends what is meant by "bubbling up." The Sanders and Warren campaigns were based around the division of wealth problem, and they had large followings because many people (especially young people) are motivated by this issue. We saw this in the Occupy Wall Street movement as well. But this trend doesn't seem to be expressed violently, so far. Yet, the neo-liberal, trickle-down, free-market ideology is the nub and the cause of the current crisis, in all its aspects, and many people are aware of this fact.

I see the COVID and systematic racism issues (including red violence and Jan 6) as rising to the crisis level.  Division of wealth?  Yes, some steps have been taken, but that is not the focus to the degree that it ought to be.  Where were the division of wealth protests last summer?  I suspect COVID and racism will no longer be distractions come the next awakening.  Division of wealth seems to be the next issue up.

But it is on the table now, and politicians know it. It is an existential threat, one among several. And completely tied up with racism and covid. It will be acted upon this 4T, or our nation sinks irretrievably into banana republic status. It's on peoples' minds already, especially young minds. And neo-liberalism is the cause of it. The cure is to overturn it. Biden is taking big strides toward doing it already.

Awakenings are more about culture and spirit than civics. I am not sympathetic to idea that solutions will come up in the next Awakening. That just means that our generations are abdicating their place in the action, especially boomers. Our time is not past. Our time is now. It is not a virtue for us to "get out of the way." Blue Boomers: Speak up!

Late Silent John Lewis spoke up, stood up and made good trouble right to the end of his life. We can do no less.

I just don't see it at the crisis level yet. Strides might be taken. I see with crisis wars becoming more rare, awakenings will take on a greater role. We'll see.

[Classic-Xer]

(04-17-2021, 10:50 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: You ignore that no single tradition defines America. Many different traditions have validity in America, and if you do not recognize this, then you do not fully understand America. 

There is plenty to despise about Donald Trump: his marital infidelity, his bigotry against many identifiable groups (including the handicapped), his sleazy history as a businessman, his suspect loyalty to America when Russia offered him more, his disdain for old decencies that make democracy work in America... were it not for his wealth, his business practices would have gotten him a prison term if he were not wise enough to allow his dreams to match what is allowed to people. 

The more that I saw of the Trump administration and of the personality behind it the more I despised and dreaded it. You saw the stunt in which he had unidentifiable forces attacking protesters so that he could carry a Bible (that he neither heeds nor reads) in front of a church that he does not attend and show the most pitiable display of fake devotion that I have ever seen. I look at the personality cult and I see a dictator. I look at the vans in Portland and Seattle that had Trump banners and a US flag that took away protesters, which is how a secret police operates. I mocked that inchoate secret police as "Trump-Trump Macoutes" after the brutal secret of the Duvalier dictatorship in Haiti. I do not mock the Haitian people who deserve far better than that. 

In the end we had a President who denied his manifest defeat and sought to set aside electoral results that he disliked -- with people willing to use force and violence. In the end, the Joint Chiefs of Staff made clear that Joe Biden had won the election and would become President on January 20, 2021. They needed say no more and needed explain nothing.



Joe Biden may not be one of those people who runs on a law-and-order stance, but that's not to say that he needs to.

Germany was a democracy before Hitler and the Nazi party were duly elected and sworn in and changed the rules/laws and took control over the country. A prime example of democratic socialism being used as means to gain control over a country. The most recent example of it being used for the same purpose is Venezuela. We ain't dumb or needy or naive or deaf and blind. So, of the 80 million who voted for Biden to save them from something, how many million are either dumb, impressionable or naive? How many are cream puffs who fear violence who don't have the courage to defend themselves or the heart to hurt anyone? How many are potheads who have little to no interest in working like Rags? How many have a mental illness of some sort that requires medicine for them to functions?

[pbrower2a]

(04-18-2021, 08:53 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(04-17-2021, 10:50 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: You ignore that no single tradition defines America. Many different traditions have validity in America, and if you do not recognize this, then you do not fully understand America. 

There is plenty to despise about Donald Trump: his marital infidelity, his bigotry against many identifiable groups (including the handicapped), his sleazy history as a businessman, his suspect loyalty to America when Russia offered him more, his disdain for old decencies that make democracy work in America... were it not for his wealth, his business practices would have gotten him a prison term if he were not wise enough to allow his dreams to match what is allowed to people. 

The more that I saw of the Trump administration and of the personality behind it the more I despised and dreaded it. You saw the stunt in which he had unidentifiable forces attacking protesters so that he could carry a Bible (that he neither heeds nor reads) in front of a church that he does not attend and show the most pitiable display of fake devotion that I have ever seen. I look at the personality cult and I see a dictator. I look at the vans in Portland and Seattle that had Trump banners and a US flag that took away protesters, which is how a secret police operates. I mocked that inchoate secret police as "Trump-Trump Macoutes" after the brutal secret of the Duvalier dictatorship in Haiti. I do not mock the Haitian people who deserve far better than that. 

In the end we had a President who denied his manifest defeat and sought to set aside electoral results that he disliked -- with people willing to use force and violence. In the end, the Joint Chiefs of Staff made clear that Joe Biden had won the election and would become President on January 20, 2021. They needed say no more and needed explain nothing.



Joe Biden may not be one of those people who runs on a law-and-order stance, but that's not to say that he needs to.

Germany was a democracy before Hitler and the Nazi party were duly elected and sworn in and changed the rules/laws and took control over the country. A prime example of democratic socialism being used as means to gain control over a country. The most recent example of it being used for the same purposeis Venezuela. We ain't dumb or needy or naive or deaf and blind. So, of the 80 million who voted for Biden to save them from something, how many million are either dumb, impressionable or naive? How many are cream puffs who fear violence who don't have the courage to defend themselves or the heart to hurt anyone? How many are potheads who have little to no interest in working like Rags? How many have a mental illness of some sort that requires medicine for them to functions?

German democracy was shaky. Germany had no responsible conservative party. The significant German National People's Party was far-right, and irresponsible. From Wikipedia:

Quote: In his book, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, journalist and historian William Shirer wrote that the DNVP's status as a far-right party rather than a mainstream conservative party was one of the main reasons for the Weimar Republic's downfall. In Shirer's view, the DNVP's refusal to "take a responsible position either in the government or in the opposition" during most of Weimar's existence denied Weimar "that stability provided in many other countries by a truly conservative party."[209] Along similar lines, conservative British historian Sir John Wheeler-Bennett wrote about in his book The Nemesis of Power about the DNVP the following:

Quote:Had the German Conservatives reconciled themselves to the Republic—bringing to it that wealth of experience and knowledge which they had accumulated in the past, and performing those invaluable services which are always fulfilled in the government of any country by an able constitutional Opposition, ready to take office should the occasion arise—they would have conferred a considerable benefit not only upon Germany—to whom they would have given that which she had so long lacked, a genuine Conservative Party—but also upon the cause of Conservatism throughout the world. They did not do this. Under the cloak of loyalty to the Monarchy, they either held aloof or sabotaged the efforts of successive Chancellors to give a stable government to the Republic. The truth is that after 1918 many German Nationalists were more influenced by feelings of disloyalty to the Republic than of loyalty to the Kaiser, and it was this motive which led them to make their fatal contribution to bringing Hitler to power. The sequel is to be found in the long list of noble names among those executed after the Putsch of July 20, 1944, when many expiated upon the scaffold the sins which they or their fathers had committed a generation earlier.[210]

Hitler quickly suppressed the Social Democrats, his main opposition in 1933. Hitler used the word "socialism", but he even called himself a democrat -- a "real" Democrat unlike one of those Jewish-influenced or even Jewish democrats like FDR  (whom Hitler thought was Jewish). 


There was no alternative, and no way in which to say "no". That is little different from how things are done in North Korea today. 


Just because the ballot reads "Reichstag for Freedom and Peace" foes not mean that Germany was in any way free, and that peace and war were strictly the choice of the Fuehrer. The Nazi Party claimed to be Socialist, which like much else about the Party, its leadership, and its agenda were enormous lies. German workers would soon be serfs to their employers, unable to quit their jobs without the consent of their employers. Such was the arrangement between feudal lords and their peasants in the late middle ages.  Nazi Germany was socialist only in nationalizing property of Jews -- basically the "socialism of thieves".

Don't ask me to defend Hugo Chavez or his successor Nicolas Maduro. Chavez slowly degraded democracy in Venezuela and Maduro has kept the screws tight.  

...81 million Americans voted for Joe Biden in a way that got him 306 electoral votes, which is how he became President. Many of those voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, but you didn't see them challenging the election even though she lost the Electoral College despite getting a plurality of the vote. Nobody can credibly accuse Donald Trump of winning through fraud, either his or that of someone else, so we were stuck with him. Claims that Trump got cheated in 2020 are shakier than those in which might have been used against the Trump election of 2016 (there were allegations of Trump getting help from his friends in Russia, but that can't quite be proven -- and it is too late to do anything about that. 

You can fault people for voting for someone other than Donald Trump for reasons that you consider specious. This said, President Trump did much to degrade American democracy, and enough people saw the danger of that in 2020. His attempted self-coup on January 6 demonstrates his contempt for Constitutional norms, in that he is much more like Hugo Chavez than you might want to believe, except that Chavez degraded Venezuelan democracy more slowly and effectively

Down with Donald Trump and Nicolas Maduro alike!

[Classic-Xer]

(04-18-2021, 10:42 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(04-18-2021, 08:53 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(04-17-2021, 10:50 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: You ignore that no single tradition defines America. Many different traditions have validity in America, and if you do not recognize this, then you do not fully understand America. 

There is plenty to despise about Donald Trump: his marital infidelity, his bigotry against many identifiable groups (including the handicapped), his sleazy history as a businessman, his suspect loyalty to America when Russia offered him more, his disdain for old decencies that make democracy work in America... were it not for his wealth, his business practices would have gotten him a prison term if he were not wise enough to allow his dreams to match what is allowed to people. 

The more that I saw of the Trump administration and of the personality behind it the more I despised and dreaded it. You saw the stunt in which he had unidentifiable forces attacking protesters so that he could carry a Bible (that he neither heeds nor reads) in front of a church that he does not attend and show the most pitiable display of fake devotion that I have ever seen. I look at the personality cult and I see a dictator. I look at the vans in Portland and Seattle that had Trump banners and a US flag that took away protesters, which is how a secret police operates. I mocked that inchoate secret police as "Trump-Trump Macoutes" after the brutal secret of the Duvalier dictatorship in Haiti. I do not mock the Haitian people who deserve far better than that. 

In the end we had a President who denied his manifest defeat and sought to set aside electoral results that he disliked -- with people willing to use force and violence. In the end, the Joint Chiefs of Staff made clear that Joe Biden had won the election and would become President on January 20, 2021. They needed say no more and needed explain nothing.



Joe Biden may not be one of those people who runs on a law-and-order stance, but that's not to say that he needs to.

Germany was a democracy before Hitler and the Nazi party were duly elected and sworn in and changed the rules/laws and took control over the country. A prime example of democratic socialism being used as means to gain control over a country. The most recent example of it being used for the same purposeis Venezuela. We ain't dumb or needy or naive or deaf and blind. So, of the 80 million who voted for Biden to save them from something, how many million are either dumb, impressionable or naive? How many are cream puffs who fear violence who don't have the courage to defend themselves or the heart to hurt anyone? How many are potheads who have little to no interest in working like Rags? How many have a mental illness of some sort that requires medicine for them to functions?

German democracy was shaky. Germany had no responsible conservative party. The significant German National People's Party was far-right, and irresponsible. From Wikipedia:

Quote: In his book, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, journalist and historian William Shirer wrote that the DNVP's status as a far-right party rather than a mainstream conservative party was one of the main reasons for the Weimar Republic's downfall. In Shirer's view, the DNVP's refusal to "take a responsible position either in the government or in the opposition" during most of Weimar's existence denied Weimar "that stability provided in many other countries by a truly conservative party."[209] Along similar lines, conservative British historian Sir John Wheeler-Bennett wrote about in his book The Nemesis of Power about the DNVP the following:

Quote:Had the German Conservatives reconciled themselves to the Republic—bringing to it that wealth of experience and knowledge which they had accumulated in the past, and performing those invaluable services which are always fulfilled in the government of any country by an able constitutional Opposition, ready to take office should the occasion arise—they would have conferred a considerable benefit not only upon Germany—to whom they would have given that which she had so long lacked, a genuine Conservative Party—but also upon the cause of Conservatism throughout the world. They did not do this. Under the cloak of loyalty to the Monarchy, they either held aloof or sabotaged the efforts of successive Chancellors to give a stable government to the Republic. The truth is that after 1918 many German Nationalists were more influenced by feelings of disloyalty to the Republic than of loyalty to the Kaiser, and it was this motive which led them to make their fatal contribution to bringing Hitler to power. The sequel is to be found in the long list of noble names among those executed after the Putsch of July 20, 1944, when many expiated upon the scaffold the sins which they or their fathers had committed a generation earlier.[210]

Hitler quickly suppressed the Social Democrats, his main opposition in 1933. Hitler used the word "socialism", but he even called himself a democrat -- a "real" Democrat unlike one of those Jewish-influenced or even Jewish democrats like FDR  (whom Hitler thought was Jewish). 


There was no alternative, and no way in which to say "no". That is little different from how things are done in North Korea today. 


Just because the ballot reads "Reichstag for Freedom and Peace" foes not mean that Germany was in any way free, and that peace and war were strictly the choice of the Fuehrer. The Nazi Party claimed to be Socialist, which like much else about the Party, its leadership, and its agenda were enormous lies. German workers would soon be serfs to their employers, unable to quit their jobs without the consent of their employers. Such was the arrangement between feudal lords and their peasants in the late middle ages.  Nazi Germany was socialist only in nationalizing property of Jews -- basically the "socialism of thieves".

Don't ask me to defend Hugo Chavez or his successor Nicolas Maduro. Chavez slowly degraded democracy in Venezuela and Maduro has kept the screws tight.  

...81 million Americans voted for Joe Biden in a way that got him 306 electoral votes, which is how he became President. Many of those voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, but you didn't see them challenging the election even though she lost the Electoral College despite getting a plurality of the vote. Nobody can credibly accuse Donald Trump of winning through fraud, either his or that of someone else, so we were stuck with him. Claims that Trump got cheated in 2020 are shakier than those in which might have been used against the Trump election of 2016 (there were allegations of Trump getting help from his friends in Russia, but that can't quite be proven -- and it is too late to do anything about that. 

You can fault people for voting for someone other than Donald Trump for reasons that you consider specious. This said, President Trump did much to degrade American democracy, and enough people saw the danger of that in 2020. His attempted self-coup on January 6 demonstrates his contempt for Constitutional norms, in that he is much more like Hugo Chavez than you might want to believe, except that Chavez degraded Venezuelan democracy more slowly and effectively

Down with Donald Trump and Nicolas Maduro alike!

Actually, the Democrats were guilty of degrading democracy as you say. It was the Democrats who got away with breaking the law by changing election laws with the use of lower level/local courts. I don't expect a lowly partisan hack like yourself to be honest enough to admit it or view it as wrong/illegal or understand the consequences of going along and making excuses for them doing that shit. You are more of a Democrat than an American at this point and I don't see that changing as long as your alive. Me, I tend to go by what's good for the goose is good for the gander. I lowered my standards by quite a bit to even up the playing field so to speak. I have no problem with the Republican party doing the same thing.

[David Horn]

(04-18-2021, 06:35 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(04-18-2021, 01:01 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(04-17-2021, 06:10 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: ... Getting back to Coca Cola, the American brand of soda pop that I've been buys and drinking since I was a little  kid. Well, mighty old Coke bent its knee to us the other day like they should being they're an American based company and an American icon. It's a subtle sign, but it's a sign of a large corporation giving way to the fittest and the economic power we represent as a group of individuals. Guess what, I told you about our size and the economic power that we represent and that's just based on a thousand dollar contribution to the American cause.

You seem to ignore the inconvenient fact that, purchasing power alone, your side of the equation has less than the other side.  The real money is in the cities.  And just what knee-bending did Coke do, exactly?

The real money isn't located in the cities these days. The cities are mainly transfer points of digital related wealth these days. I have some money located in Wall Street and Silicon Valley right now. I don't know a Republican voter who doesn't have money located in them today. If the real money was mainly located in the cities as you say, the cities wouldn't be as heavily Democratic or as heavily Progressive (Left Wing) as they are today. The fact is the cities are mainly banana republics with some pockets of real wealth these days. 

I would be interested in knowing what you consider "real wealth".  It was land in the Agricultural Age and factories in the Industrial.  In the Information Age, it's amorphous.  If a digital artists can sell an access token to a collector (and I use that term advisedly) for $69 Million, what does wealth even mean these days?

C-Xer Wrote:Coca Cola jumped on the Progressive band wagon without thinking about the consequences of being associated with the Progressives and their Marxist/ racist politics. A group of American right wingers gave them a heads up, educated them and Coca Cola decided that it was not in their to continue and find themselves being bankrupted and essentially eliminated from the American market. I prefer the imported Coke from Mexico myself. It's more expensive than regular Coke made from corn syrup. You know the Coke made with real sugar that we drank during the 70's. The Coke that Joe Green guzzled down before he tossed his jersey to the white kid my age who gave it to him to drink. Do you remember the commercial? You do know who Joe Green is right? If not, Joe Green was a famous black football player who played for the famous Steelers back in the 70's. The country was way more racist back then than today. But some how or another, the white supremacist system, or systemic racism as you call it, didn't stop him from succeeding and becoming rich and famous back then, No, he succeeded despite not having any black people associated with the union or management or ownership or coaching staff protecting him, favoring him or looking out for his interests back then. If I was a white supremacist, I would have been very upset. I would have been wondering how an all white system controlled by white people failed to stop him from entering and succeeding like he did and failed to stop Jesse Owens from doing it too long before Joe Green and Barrack Obama were born and became rich and famous as well.

Point by point:

• I know about sugar-based sodas.  We have them here too.
  
• I also know about Joe Green, though placing him in a race-context is foolish.  Athletes and performers have been given a "race pass" by the white community for a long time.  The color barrier fell with Jackie Robinson.
  
• Jesse Owens was a finger in Hitler's eye more than anything else. Other than a ob with Ford, he didn't gain much from his notoriety. 
  
• What does any of this have to do with anything?
  

[David Horn]

(04-18-2021, 07:04 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(04-18-2021, 01:13 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Awakenings are more about culture and spirit than civics. I am not sympathetic to idea that solutions will come up in the next Awakening. That just means that our generations are abdicating their place in the action, especially boomers. Our time is not past. Our time is now. It is not a virtue for us to "get out of the way." Blue Boomers: Speak up!

Late Silent John Lewis spoke up, stood up and made good trouble right to the end of his life. We can do no less.

I just don't see it at the crisis level yet.  Strides might be taken.  I see with crisis wars becoming more rare, awakenings will take on a greater role.  We'll see.

I agree.  If not for COVID, this Crisis era would not have lived up to former expectations - and that's not for lack of other pressing issues.  The pace of change is so fast now that concepts tend to be dealt-with immediately or they fall into the background noise.  Will that mean that 2Ts will now be the home to social and political change engines?  I guess we'll know soon enough.

[David Horn]

(04-18-2021, 08:53 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Germany was a democracy before Hitler and the Nazi party were duly elected and sworn in and changed the rules/laws and took control over the country. A prime example of democratic socialism being used as means to gain control over a country. The most recent example of it being used for the same purpose is Venezuela. We ain't dumb or needy or naive or deaf and blind. So, of the 80 million who voted for Biden to save them from something, how many million are either dumb, impressionable or naive? How many are cream puffs who fear violence who don't have the courage to defend themselves or the heart to hurt anyone? How many are potheads who have little to no interest in working like Rags? How many have a mental illness of some sort that requires medicine for them to functions?

There's a vast similarity between the Nazi rise to power and Trump's.  I see little if any to Venezuela. The difference between the Nazis' ascent and Trump's: formidable institutions.  Trump tried his damnedest to break and evade them, but they held long enough to get him out of power.

[pbrower2a]

(04-19-2021, 12:39 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(04-18-2021, 10:42 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(04-18-2021, 08:53 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(04-17-2021, 10:50 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: You ignore that no single tradition defines America. Many different traditions have validity in America, and if you do not recognize this, then you do not fully understand America. 

There is plenty to despise about Donald Trump: his marital infidelity, his bigotry against many identifiable groups (including the handicapped), his sleazy history as a businessman, his suspect loyalty to America when Russia offered him more, his disdain for old decencies that make democracy work in America... were it not for his wealth, his business practices would have gotten him a prison term if he were not wise enough to allow his dreams to match what is allowed to people. 

The more that I saw of the Trump administration and of the personality behind it the more I despised and dreaded it. You saw the stunt in which he had unidentifiable forces attacking protesters so that he could carry a Bible (that he neither heeds nor reads) in front of a church that he does not attend and show the most pitiable display of fake devotion that I have ever seen. I look at the personality cult and I see a dictator. I look at the vans in Portland and Seattle that had Trump banners and a US flag that took away protesters, which is how a secret police operates. I mocked that inchoate secret police as "Trump-Trump Macoutes" after the brutal secret of the Duvalier dictatorship in Haiti. I do not mock the Haitian people who deserve far better than that. 

In the end we had a President who denied his manifest defeat and sought to set aside electoral results that he disliked -- with people willing to use force and violence. In the end, the Joint Chiefs of Staff made clear that Joe Biden had won the election and would become President on January 20, 2021. They needed say no more and needed explain nothing.



Joe Biden may not be one of those people who runs on a law-and-order stance, but that's not to say that he needs to.

Germany was a democracy before Hitler and the Nazi party were duly elected and sworn in and changed the rules/laws and took control over the country. A prime example of democratic socialism being used as means to gain control over a country. The most recent example of it being used for the same purposeis Venezuela. We ain't dumb or needy or naive or deaf and blind. So, of the 80 million who voted for Biden to save them from something, how many million are either dumb, impressionable or naive? How many are cream puffs who fear violence who don't have the courage to defend themselves or the heart to hurt anyone? How many are potheads who have little to no interest in working like Rags? How many have a mental illness of some sort that requires medicine for them to functions?

German democracy was shaky. Germany had no responsible conservative party. The significant German National People's Party was far-right, and irresponsible. From Wikipedia:

Quote: In his book, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, journalist and historian William Shirer wrote that the DNVP's status as a far-right party rather than a mainstream conservative party was one of the main reasons for the Weimar Republic's downfall. In Shirer's view, the DNVP's refusal to "take a responsible position either in the government or in the opposition" during most of Weimar's existence denied Weimar "that stability provided in many other countries by a truly conservative party."[209] Along similar lines, conservative British historian Sir John Wheeler-Bennett wrote about in his book The Nemesis of Power about the DNVP the following:

Quote:Had the German Conservatives reconciled themselves to the Republic—bringing to it that wealth of experience and knowledge which they had accumulated in the past, and performing those invaluable services which are always fulfilled in the government of any country by an able constitutional Opposition, ready to take office should the occasion arise—they would have conferred a considerable benefit not only upon Germany—to whom they would have given that which she had so long lacked, a genuine Conservative Party—but also upon the cause of Conservatism throughout the world. They did not do this. Under the cloak of loyalty to the Monarchy, they either held aloof or sabotaged the efforts of successive Chancellors to give a stable government to the Republic. The truth is that after 1918 many German Nationalists were more influenced by feelings of disloyalty to the Republic than of loyalty to the Kaiser, and it was this motive which led them to make their fatal contribution to bringing Hitler to power. The sequel is to be found in the long list of noble names among those executed after the Putsch of July 20, 1944, when many expiated upon the scaffold the sins which they or their fathers had committed a generation earlier.[210]

Hitler quickly suppressed the Social Democrats, his main opposition in 1933. Hitler used the word "socialism", but he even called himself a democrat -- a "real" Democrat unlike one of those Jewish-influenced or even Jewish democrats like FDR  (whom Hitler thought was Jewish). 


There was no alternative, and no way in which to say "no". That is little different from how things are done in North Korea today. 


Just because the ballot reads "Reichstag for Freedom and Peace" foes not mean that Germany was in any way free, and that peace and war were strictly the choice of the Fuehrer. The Nazi Party claimed to be Socialist, which like much else about the Party, its leadership, and its agenda were enormous lies. German workers would soon be serfs to their employers, unable to quit their jobs without the consent of their employers. Such was the arrangement between feudal lords and their peasants in the late middle ages.  Nazi Germany was socialist only in nationalizing property of Jews -- basically the "socialism of thieves".

Don't ask me to defend Hugo Chavez or his successor Nicolas Maduro. Chavez slowly degraded democracy in Venezuela and Maduro has kept the screws tight.  

...81 million Americans voted for Joe Biden in a way that got him 306 electoral votes, which is how he became President. Many of those voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, but you didn't see them challenging the election even though she lost the Electoral College despite getting a plurality of the vote. Nobody can credibly accuse Donald Trump of winning through fraud, either his or that of someone else, so we were stuck with him. Claims that Trump got cheated in 2020 are shakier than those in which might have been used against the Trump election of 2016 (there were allegations of Trump getting help from his friends in Russia, but that can't quite be proven -- and it is too late to do anything about that. 

You can fault people for voting for someone other than Donald Trump for reasons that you consider specious. This said, President Trump did much to degrade American democracy, and enough people saw the danger of that in 2020. His attempted self-coup on January 6 demonstrates his contempt for Constitutional norms, in that he is much more like Hugo Chavez than you might want to believe, except that Chavez degraded Venezuelan democracy more slowly and effectively

Down with Donald Trump and Nicolas Maduro alike!

Actually, the Democrats were guilty of degrading democracy as you say.  It was the Democrats who got away with breaking the law by changing election laws with the use of lower level/local courts.  I don't expect a lowly partisan hack like yourself to be honest enough to admit it or view it as wrong/illegal or understand the consequences of going along and making excuses for them doing that shit. You are more of a Democrat than an American at this point and I don't see that changing as long as your alive.  Me, I tend to go by what's good for the goose is good for the gander. I lowered my standards by quite a bit to even up the playing field so to speak. I have no problem with the Republican party doing the same thing.

Electoral rules were changed to accommodate the reality of a dangerous epidemic. Due to COVID-19, voting in person, like any mass meeting, could have become a spreader event. Early, absentee, and by-mail voting (the line between the three is hazy, but the controls against multiple voting  were still in place. State legislatures and the courts approved of the changes for 2020. 

If more people voted than usual... then at the lest there were portents, including the unusually-heavy voting in a midterm election in 2018.

Crookedness? It has never been more difficult to cast a dishonest vote or to invalidate  the votes of a disqualified voter. Someone who cast a vote on September 25 and died on October 25 was likely to have his absentee ballot disqualified due to death. My county clerk reads the obituaries, and someone who dies is automatically removed from the voter rolls. I asked about that with my deceased parents.

Results were slightly better than expected for the GOP. Polling just before the election suggested a D landslide, but the election proved close. You do not have a case on that. I saw the vote totals come in, and in general in the five states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin and two other states that were close -- Nevada and North Carolina) a pattern emerged based on the order in which the votes were counted:  the rural votes that could be counted early and were strongly R were counted early and gave early advantages to Donald Trump. Urban and many suburban votes that could not be counted quickly were announced only upon completion of the count in precinct. In-person votes were counted first and posted as public results. Absentee votes which were typically cast earlier and were heavily D were counted later. In North Carolina the urban vote that came in late was not enough to give the state's electoral votes to Donald Trump. In the other close states, figures of the news media recognized that the last votes to be counted would be those from  Phoenix, Atlanta, Detroit, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, and Milwaukee. The votes from those cities had their usual results, and those overpowered what had been narrow Trump advantages in the early count.  

The order in which votes are counted reflects reality and state law. That the votes that get counted last go a way that you dislike them going (and, yes, Trump had an early lead in Minnesota, too  but that also vanished as the votes came in from the Twin Cities) does not disqualify them. 

America is changing, perhaps into something uncomfortable to you. Maybe you need to get out and about more. America is becoming less Anglo, white, and Protestant.

[Eric the Green]

(04-18-2021, 07:04 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(04-18-2021, 01:13 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(04-18-2021, 11:09 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(04-18-2021, 12:25 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: It depends what is meant by "bubbling up." The Sanders and Warren campaigns were based around the division of wealth problem, and they had large followings because many people (especially young people) are motivated by this issue. We saw this in the Occupy Wall Street movement as well. But this trend doesn't seem to be expressed violently, so far. Yet, the neo-liberal, trickle-down, free-market ideology is the nub and the cause of the current crisis, in all its aspects, and many people are aware of this fact.

I see the COVID and systematic racism issues (including red violence and Jan 6) as rising to the crisis level.  Division of wealth?  Yes, some steps have been taken, but that is not the focus to the degree that it ought to be.  Where were the division of wealth protests last summer?  I suspect COVID and racism will no longer be distractions come the next awakening.  Division of wealth seems to be the next issue up.

But it is on the table now, and politicians know it. It is an existential threat, one among several. And completely tied up with racism and covid. It will be acted upon this 4T, or our nation sinks irretrievably into banana republic status. It's on peoples' minds already, especially young minds. And neo-liberalism is the cause of it. The cure is to overturn it. Biden is taking big strides toward doing it already.

Awakenings are more about culture and spirit than civics. I am not sympathetic to idea that solutions will come up in the next Awakening. That just means that our generations are abdicating their place in the action, especially boomers. Our time is not past. Our time is now. It is not a virtue for us to "get out of the way." Blue Boomers: Speak up!

Late Silent John Lewis spoke up, stood up and made good trouble right to the end of his life. We can do no less.

I just don't see it at the crisis level yet.  Strides might be taken.  I see with crisis wars becoming more rare, awakenings will take on a greater role.  We'll see.

The economic crisis and inequality crisis was at crisis level in 2008-2011. Protests and civil wars erupted worldwide from this. What we have are lingering problems from that, including the ongoing refugee crisis. So yes, strides are due, and are being taken. A reform decade has arrived, which is part of a 30-year cycle, which this time will coincide with a Crisis Climax-- and the House has already begun acting. 

I agree, Crisis total wars may become more rare; although we have 8 years left, and moments of potential war crisis in circa 2025 and 2028 still lie ahead. Still, 4Ts like ours, in which other kinds of crisis struggles occur, are likely to continue, so institutional actions will be needed such as reforms and revolutions. Much remains to be done in this 4T, with much resistance to overcome. Republicans still have too much power, and they have to be taken down, or we will slide into banana republic status in the USA. The Classic Xers (and Red Boomers and Red Millennials too), with their retrograde social worldviews, need to be politically defeated, or militarily defeated like the confederates were if they violently rebel in resistance to the reforms.

The main role of Awakenings remains a spiritual consciousness revival, so civic reforms are always secondary in 2Ts. People focus on culture. Ideals of how to reform society appear too in Awakenings, but it remains for 4Ts to bring them to greater institutional and civic fruition. In Awakenings, people focus on spiritual, religious and cultural remedies for our concerns, and discover how to be more alive and aware. Liberation is the theme. Awakeners won't be willing to give up those pursuits in order to make up for what we fail to do in Crisis periods.

[Eric the Green]

(04-19-2021, 09:59 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(04-18-2021, 07:04 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(04-18-2021, 01:13 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Awakenings are more about culture and spirit than civics. I am not sympathetic to idea that solutions will come up in the next Awakening. That just means that our generations are abdicating their place in the action, especially boomers. Our time is not past. Our time is now. It is not a virtue for us to "get out of the way." Blue Boomers: Speak up!

Late Silent John Lewis spoke up, stood up and made good trouble right to the end of his life. We can do no less.

I just don't see it at the crisis level yet.  Strides might be taken.  I see with crisis wars becoming more rare, awakenings will take on a greater role.  We'll see.

I agree.  If not for COVID, this Crisis era would not have lived up to former expectations - and that's not for lack of other pressing issues.  The pace of change is so fast now that concepts tend to be dealt-with immediately or they fall into the background noise.  Will that mean that 2Ts will now be the home to social and political change engines?  I guess we'll know soon enough.

We will indeed, and what we'll see is that this decade is going to get hotter, with or without a crisis war, foreign or domestic. If 2Ts become the home of social and political change engines, then the cycle will flip and 4Ts will become home to spiritual and cultural change engines. The balance of actual life continues. I say 2Ts will not become 4Ts, and 4Ts will not become 2Ts, just because we were cowards and failed to fulfill our proper role in this 4T. We either fulfill our role in this 4T, or for the first time our 4T fails, and the USA becomes a banana republic with a very weak and meaningless saeculum cycle-- which is a huge turning wheel that only exists because there is forward progress. It is a hurricane, and without the warm water of human aspiration to feed it, it will become a tropical storm and fade away.

Our neo-liberal 3T actually did slow it down, and that may be a sign of future failure in this hurricane. But perhaps it is only the sign of the cosmic cycles, which ebb and flow.

[Bob Butler 54]

(04-19-2021, 12:39 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: We will indeed, and what we'll see is that this decade is going to get hotter, with or without a crisis war, foreign or domestic. If 2Ts become the home of social and political change engines, then the cycle will flip and 4Ts will become home to spiritual and cultural change engines. The balance of actual life continues. I say 2Ts will not become 4Ts, and 4Ts will not become 2Ts, just because we were cowards and failed to fulfill our proper role in this 4T. We either fulfill our role in this 4T, or for the first time our 4T fails, and the USA becomes a banana republic with a very weak and meaningless saeculum cycle-- which is a huge turning wheel that only exists because there is forward progress. It is a hurricane, and without the warm water of human aspiration to feed it, it will become a tropical storm and fade away.

Our neo-liberal 3T actually did slow it down, and that may be a sign of future failure in this hurricane. But perhaps it is only the sign of the cosmic cycles, which ebb and flow.

Part of it is obstruction. Yes, conservatives are generally unwilling to deal with big issues, but the recent obstruction made it difficult to address anything. If the filibuster is neutered or destroyed, if the Republican senators decide that helping the people is more important than screwing up progress, then many minor problems which have not risen to the crisis level might be solved too.

But more patience seems to be required.

[pbrower2a]

Classic X'er:

this video may unsettle you. You may like putting yourself at ease about your bigotry and your cruel rhetoric. Much of what keeps many of us from entering the abyss is our revulsion at evil. If we are to avoid becoming evil ourselves, then we must judge it in its early stages. A newborn Nile or saltwater crocodile may seem harmless; we all know what it can grow into. The hatchling crocodile grows from being a potential snack for such small killers as terrier dogs and domestic cats to the sorts of creatures that can singly dispatch a zebra.






Fascist butchery never starts with mass murder. It only culminates in mass murder... maybe. It is easy to understand (if not excuse) a predatory act such as an armed robbery for getting the money for booze or drugs. Understandable as it is, my state (Michigan) has the same mandatory sentence for armed robbery as for attempted murder: 25 to life, with no parole for 25 years. In a sense the equivalence has its validity: every armed robbery is a potential murder. 

Adolf Hitler wasn't much of a murderer, as despots go, for the first six years of his vile rule. A military coup may result in the quick elimination of likely opposition that of course requires a few thousand murders, as under Pinochet -- but after that people know the norms (recognize that far worse is possible in life than exploitation, abuse, humiliation, and mindlessness... if you don't love it, leave it, so pretend that your suffering is a good thing with desirable objectives) and know how to stay alive another day. You know how that goes: no matter how you suffer, remember to show that just-happy-to-be-alive smile that shows that the secret police hasn't shoved your teeth down your throat because you made a joke about the dictator. Yes, there was the Night of the Long Knives, which, disgusting as it was, was made to look as an aberration in a society that tried to seem normal. Yes, there was the program to kill the mentally-disabled, but after leading figures called attention to that in international media (Hitler was conscious of his image, as is especially so of the hollowest people) he backed down. Not until he could get away with anything under the fog of war did he start mass murder that never stopped until liberation of occupied Europe and Germany itself.  

I understand the corporate wing of the American Hard Right, and I have no cause to see it operating on any higher moral ground than the tycoons and big landowners of Germany from the time of Bismarck to the time in which the Commies dispossessed many of them. Some may be less nasty than others, but they had no problem supporting a beast like Pinochet in Chile because he kept wages near starvation levels and labor discipline tight while making sweetheart deals with the American owners of "American interests (really, corporate investments) abroad". Yes, even Americans are clever enough to do Orwellian doubletalk to justify the worst that Corporate America does. Most Americans have no stake in the inflated profits achieved with the aid of brutal discipline in foreign workplaces and corrupt dealings with dictatorial leaders. Most of us are simply content that such does not happen here. 

Don't fool yourself. Many of our economic elites would like that to happen here through connivance with political stooges. Once that happens, we may lose all dignity other than the ability to show the mandated smile that demonstrates our gratefulness for not having some of our teeth kicked, hammered, or fist-knocked down our throats for failing to recognize how great it is to be overworked and underpaid or even being rendered destitute after having been a small-scale business owner-operator for the benefit of people devoid of any responsibility other than to their class of exploiters. 

Remember: the armed robber doesn't stick around to keep offering the proposition "your money or your life" on a continuing basis. A brutal exploiter keeps such in place. So the money that you intended to use for a night on the town instead buys heroin for some desperate addict in need of a fix -- well, at least you will still be able to earn more money, and perhaps good money from a job that pays well and fairly due to a good union contract. The next time that you go out for a night on the town you will know enough to park in the parking garage within the building instead of parking a few blocks away to save a few bucks on parking. With the brutal exploiter like a German plutocrat in the Third Reich and a colonial empire that extended from France to Russia and Norway to Greece, your only hope is to outlast that situation. Terms of employment best known as serfdom are the proposition "your toil to exhaustion or your life" every nightmarish day until the Allied armies emancipate you. 

Liberty is worth some hardship and frustration. Nobody can get everything that he wants consistently unless a tyrant, and every tyrant rightly fears ending up like Nicolae Ceausescu or Satan Hussein.

[Classic-Xer]

(04-19-2021, 12:24 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Electoral rules were changed to accommodate the reality of a dangerous epidemic. Due to COVID-19, voting in person, like any mass meeting, could have become a spreader event. Early, absentee, and by-mail voting (the line between the three is hazy, but the controls against multiple voting  were still in place. State legislatures and the courts approved of the changes for 2020. 

If more people voted than usual... then at the lest there were portents, including the unusually-heavy voting in a midterm election in 2018.

Crookedness? It has never been more difficult to cast a dishonest vote or to invalidate  the votes of a disqualified voter. Someone who cast a vote on September 25 and died on October 25 was likely to have his absentee ballot disqualified due to death. My county clerk reads the obituaries, and someone who dies is automatically removed from the voter rolls. I asked about that with my deceased parents.

Results were slightly better than expected for the GOP. Polling just before the election suggested a D landslide, but the election proved close. You do not have a case on that. I saw the vote totals come in, and in general in the five states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin and two other states that were close -- Nevada and North Carolina) a pattern emerged based on the order in which the votes were counted:  the rural votes that could be counted early and were strongly R were counted early and gave early advantages to Donald Trump. Urban and many suburban votes that could not be counted quickly were announced only upon completion of the count in precinct. In-person votes were counted first and posted as public results. Absentee votes which were typically cast earlier and were heavily D were counted later. In North Carolina the urban vote that came in late was not enough to give the state's electoral votes to Donald Trump. In the other close states, figures of the news media recognized that the last votes to be counted would be those from  Phoenix, Atlanta, Detroit, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, and Milwaukee. The votes from those cities had their usual results, and those overpowered what had been narrow Trump advantages in the early count.  

The order in which votes are counted reflects reality and state law. That the votes that get counted last go a way that you dislike them going (and, yes, Trump had an early lead in Minnesota, too  but that also vanished as the votes came in from the Twin Cities) does not disqualify them. 

America is changing, perhaps into something uncomfortable to you. Maybe you need to get out and about more. America is becoming less Anglo, white, and Protestant.

You're making excuses for an OBVIOUS wrong doing again. The bulk of the Republican base ignored the danger associated with the pandemic (it's easy to do when you've been working and living through it the entire time) and voted in mass like they normally do on election day during a high point of the pandemic. I think it's very clear (damn near cut and dry) that the illegal gerrymandering of election laws that were done were done increase voter turnout that would mainly benefited the Democratic side. You shared a list of changes to the norm that pertained to people that normally wouldn't have been able to vote. People like people in jail and people from some other district and people without any proof of identity were given the right to vote and so forth.

The only people who really deserved special considerations and minor tweaks to normal voting procedures like additional absentee ballots and additional means to have them delivered were those who were at high risk stuck/isolated in nursing homes or those of high risk like yourself and others here isolating themselves at home. It doesn't matter now, the government that you and others are reliant upon for support didn't adequately address it, blew it off and more or less brushed it under the rug of wrong doing and called it good anyway and signed off on Biden becoming President. Well, guess what, the damage is done and fixing it ain't going to happen now. I'd like to see if you are able to look me in the eye and tell me that what went on with voting laws was legitimate and perfectly legal. I doubt you'd do it, if you're smart that is? I'm not sure how smart you are, you seem pretty dumb for a smart person. It's not a knock, it's just an observation that you normally wouldn't hear. You're right, a portion of America is changing as in deteriorating and turning to shit these days. Oh well, it's a Democratic problem that Democrats are going to find themselves being forced to pay for one way or another and find themselves being held accountable for as far as they're actions as well. Oh, then there's the matter of cheering them on and raising funds to bail them out and more or less allowing it to continue like they've been doing.

[Eric the Green]

(04-19-2021, 04:07 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(04-19-2021, 12:39 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: We will indeed, and what we'll see is that this decade is going to get hotter, with or without a crisis war, foreign or domestic. If 2Ts become the home of social and political change engines, then the cycle will flip and 4Ts will become home to spiritual and cultural change engines. The balance of actual life continues. I say 2Ts will not become 4Ts, and 4Ts will not become 2Ts, just because we were cowards and failed to fulfill our proper role in this 4T. We either fulfill our role in this 4T, or for the first time our 4T fails, and the USA becomes a banana republic with a very weak and meaningless saeculum cycle-- which is a huge turning wheel that only exists because there is forward progress. It is a hurricane, and without the warm water of human aspiration to feed it, it will become a tropical storm and fade away.

Our neo-liberal 3T actually did slow it down, and that may be a sign of future failure in this hurricane. But perhaps it is only the sign of the cosmic cycles, which ebb and flow.

Part of it is obstruction.  Yes, conservatives are generally unwilling to deal with big issues, but the recent obstruction made it difficult to address anything.  If the filibuster is neutered or destroyed, if the Republican senators decide that helping the people is more important than screwing up progress, then many minor problems which have not risen to the crisis level might be solved too.

But more patience seems to be required.

Yes, and the many major problems that are at crisis levels, but not severe enough yet to stir up violence in the information age, might be addressed too. 

Unfortunately, it will take more Democrats elected before this is likely to happen. Maybe a few more senators bold enough to bypass the filibuster, and keeping the House, will do it. So, patience indeed; on the part of millennials in Nov. 2022 who did not show it in 2010. Will they show it, and show up to vote Democratic in the 2022 midterms? That may tell the tale-- whether the Crisis can go well or not, or whether we fall into a hole from which we will not rise again, or not. The next one or two elections will decide which is the case. And victory over any armed resistance to the needed and achieved reforms, including gun control. 

If progress does not win this decade, then we will not have an Awakening to speak of. Certainly not one that will accomplish what our current generations failed to do. Neo-liberalism cannot continue to dominate, after 40 years of its regression. Banana republics don't have Awakenings. Victory must happen in the 4T and recovery/high in the 1T first, as it always has in the anglo-american saeculum. An Awakening will not happen in a Classic Xer America.

A victory, however, does not mean that the progressive and blue/green side gets everything it wants. But IF we get enough done this decade, then more progress can be expected in the next 2T and 4T. And patience until then will be warranted.

[Classic-Xer]

(04-19-2021, 12:30 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(04-18-2021, 07:04 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(04-18-2021, 01:13 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(04-18-2021, 11:09 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(04-18-2021, 12:25 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: It depends what is meant by "bubbling up." The Sanders and Warren campaigns were based around the division of wealth problem, and they had large followings because many people (especially young people) are motivated by this issue. We saw this in the Occupy Wall Street movement as well. But this trend doesn't seem to be expressed violently, so far. Yet, the neo-liberal, trickle-down, free-market ideology is the nub and the cause of the current crisis, in all its aspects, and many people are aware of this fact.

I see the COVID and systematic racism issues (including red violence and Jan 6) as rising to the crisis level.  Division of wealth?  Yes, some steps have been taken, but that is not the focus to the degree that it ought to be.  Where were the division of wealth protests last summer?  I suspect COVID and racism will no longer be distractions come the next awakening.  Division of wealth seems to be the next issue up.

But it is on the table now, and politicians know it. It is an existential threat, one among several. And completely tied up with racism and covid. It will be acted upon this 4T, or our nation sinks irretrievably into banana republic status. It's on peoples' minds already, especially young minds. And neo-liberalism is the cause of it. The cure is to overturn it. Biden is taking big strides toward doing it already.

Awakenings are more about culture and spirit than civics. I am not sympathetic to idea that solutions will come up in the next Awakening. That just means that our generations are abdicating their place in the action, especially boomers. Our time is not past. Our time is now. It is not a virtue for us to "get out of the way." Blue Boomers: Speak up!

Late Silent John Lewis spoke up, stood up and made good trouble right to the end of his life. We can do no less.

I just don't see it at the crisis level yet.  Strides might be taken.  I see with crisis wars becoming more rare, awakenings will take on a greater role.  We'll see.

The economic crisis and inequality crisis was at crisis level in 2008-2011. Protests and civil wars erupted worldwide from this. What we have are lingering problems from that, including the ongoing refugee crisis. So yes, strides are due, and are being taken. A reform decade has arrived, which is part of a 30-year cycle, which this time will coincide with a Crisis Climax-- and the House has already begun acting. 

I agree, Crisis total wars may become more rare; although we have 8 years left, and moments of potential war crisis in circa 2025 and 2028 still lie ahead. Still, 4Ts like ours, in which other kinds of crisis struggles occur, are likely to continue, so institutional actions will be needed such as reforms and revolutions. Much remains to be done in this 4T, with much resistance to overcome. Republicans still have too much power, and they have to be taken down, or we will slide into banana republic status in the USA. The Classic Xers (and Red Boomers and Red Millennials too), with their retrograde social worldviews, need to be politically defeated, or militarily defeated like the confederates were if they violently rebel in resistance to the reforms.

The main role of Awakenings remains a spiritual consciousness revival, so civic reforms are always secondary in 2Ts. People focus on culture. Ideals of how to reform society appear too in Awakenings, but it remains for 4Ts to bring them to greater institutional and civic fruition. In Awakenings, people focus on spiritual, religious and cultural remedies for our concerns, and discover how to be more alive and aware. Liberation is the theme. Awakeners won't be willing to give up those pursuits in order to make up for what we fail to do in Crisis periods.

We aren't the Confederates. We're the Americans aka American Yankees of today. What's different about today? The modern day Southerns are mainly American Yankee's too.  Dude, you are on the side that clung to idea of Monarch's and Aristocrats, clung to slavery, clung to Jim Crow and clinging to inequality today. You're also still clinging to Marxism today. I assume that you and so many others are still clinging to them because there are jobs (some more lucrative than others) lots of funding and the possibility of fame and fortune too. Your problem with me is pretty simple. I'm older and wiser and not easily duped. Your problem is we understand what you want and understand the tactics that your trying to use with us that works so well with most everyone on the Democratic side who are mainly female or cream puff male or a clueless minority who has never seen America mad and free to terrorize them by passing racist looking/sounding laws and cracking down during their lifetime so far.

[Einzige]

Congratulations! You're a fucking retard!