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I am so disappointed. I thought I would never see a House of Representatives as crazy and dedicated to destruction as the Tea Party congress after 2010. We are now likely to see a congress of cultist conspiracy freaks even more destructive, more crazy and more dedicated to taking away all real freedom and justice. The misnamed Freedom Caucus was bad enough. I wonder what the Boebert/Greene wing call themselves. Just the MAGA wing I guess has become the established name for them. It is just one reason I am feeling sad and lazy today.
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(10-20-2022, 02:07 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: I am so disappointed. I thought I would never see a House of Representatives as crazy and dedicated to destruction as the Tea Party congress after 2010. We are now likely to see a congress of cultist conspiracy freaks even more destructive, more crazy and more dedicated to taking away all real freedom and justice. The misnamed Freedom Caucus was bad enough. I wonder what the Boebert/Greene wing call themselves. Just the MAGA wing I guess has become the established name for them. It is just one reason I am feeling sad and lazy today.
The fault lies with us Americans on a whole. If not, then our neighbors, whether the cultists themselves or those who see QAnon, the John Birch Society, the Dark Money plutocrats, authoritarian religiosity, and the militia movements as useful people in achieving their agenda. Those cultists offer conservatives their agenda in pure expression in economics and culture, but those cultists will take away freedom, and not only from liberals.
We liberals see no reason to take freedom from the conservatives. The conservatives will be necessary in the event that someone ever gets the power to "defund the police" or impose Critical Race Theory, and conservatives may be exactly the ones to know how to stop inflation (quit printing money or stop creating easy credit). Conservatives have at times been necessary in the defense of liberty, and if there has ever been a time in which conservatives must defend liberty from domestic threats, then now is the time.
Aside from some lonely Stalinists, Maoists, Hoxha groupies, and Trotskyites, America has no meaningful Far Left. Even the Communist party of the USA is trying to go mainstream. I wish that I could say of the Far Right that it consisted only of fascist pigs who prance around in Klan robes or brown shirts, or spew mirror-image Marxism in their John Birch cells, while clueless about the ridicule that they get from the rest of America. I regret that such is not so. The Hard Right is divisive, cruel, and mad. It is now hard to distinguish the Republican Party from the John Birch Society in agenda and ideology. It is not that the Birchers have gone mainstream; it is instead that the GOP has gone in the Bircher direction.
We know what Marxism is. Mirror-image Marxism is the endorsement of the ugliest critique of capitalism as a defense of class privilege as an ideal. The difference between mirror-image Marxists from real Marxists is that the mirror-image Marxists kill to preserve the sort of social order that is most vulnerable to a proletarian revolution. All social orders have some combination of repression, inequality, and hierarchy, but those high on all three are the ones most likely to implode under stress... like Imperial Russia. In the meantime repression kills in the prisons and concentration camps' inequality starves and humiliates most people; hierarchy bungles commerce and wars.
Tyranny of any kind demonstrates that some conditions are worse than Death itself.
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.
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(10-20-2022, 11:47 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: (10-20-2022, 02:07 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: I am so disappointed. I thought I would never see a House of Representatives as crazy and dedicated to destruction as the Tea Party congress after 2010. We are now likely to see a congress of cultist conspiracy freaks even more destructive, more crazy and more dedicated to taking away all real freedom and justice. The misnamed Freedom Caucus was bad enough. I wonder what the Boebert/Greene wing call themselves. Just the MAGA wing I guess has become the established name for them. It is just one reason I am feeling sad and lazy today.
The fault lies with us Americans on a whole. If not, then our neighbors, whether the cultists themselves or those who see QAnon, the John Birch Society, the Dark Money plutocrats, authoritarian religiosity, and the militia movements as useful people in achieving their agenda. Those cultists offer conservatives their agenda in pure expression in economics and culture, but those cultists will take away freedom, and not only from liberals.
We liberals see no reason to take freedom from the conservatives. The conservatives will be necessary in the event that someone ever gets the power to "defund the police" or impose Critical Race Theory, and conservatives may be exactly the ones to know how to stop inflation (quit printing money or stop creating easy credit). Conservatives have at times been necessary in the defense of liberty, and if there has ever been a time in which conservatives must defend liberty from domestic threats, then now is the time.
Aside from some lonely Stalinists, Maoists, Hoxha groupies, and Trotskyites, America has no meaningful Far Left. Even the Communist party of the USA is trying to go mainstream. I wish that I could say of the Far Right that it consisted only of fascist pigs who prance around in Klan robes or brown shirts, or spew mirror-image Marxism in their John Birch cells, while clueless about the ridicule that they get from the rest of America. I regret that such is not so. The Hard Right is divisive, cruel, and mad. It is now hard to distinguish the Republican Party from the John Birch Society in agenda and ideology. It is not that the Birchers have gone mainstream; it is instead that the GOP has gone in the Bircher direction.
We know what Marxism is. Mirror-image Marxism is the endorsement of the ugliest critique of capitalism as a defense of class privilege as an ideal. The difference between mirror-image Marxists from real Marxists is that the mirror-image Marxists kill to preserve the sort of social order that is most vulnerable to a proletarian revolution. All social orders have some combination of repression, inequality, and hierarchy, but those high on all three are the ones most likely to implode under stress... like Imperial Russia. In the meantime repression kills in the prisons and concentration camps' inequality starves and humiliates most people; hierarchy bungles commerce and wars.
Tyranny of any kind demonstrates that some conditions are worse than Death itself.
Right, although we very much need "critical race theory", which really means full education about all that we have done in the USA to repress various ethnic groups, as well as all our other mistakes, so we can learn to do better, instead of using the excuse that "critical race theory" will make poor young students unhappy with their country.
"Defund the police" is a slogan used by some protesters, but is not said by any Democratic Party politicians, yet nevertheless is being used against them to great effect in billionaire-funded ads. What the protesters and some politicians really mean by this idea is that social and health services have been reduced in the last 40 years by neoliberal Reaganomics, leaving the police to do the job of these health and social-work professionals instead of the big job of policing that the police need to do. So funds may need to be shifted to the health and social services so that the police can focus on policing. And if there's a need for more police to do actual policing beyond this, due to rising crime, it can be and is being funded. But these police must be well trained not to kill on the basis of race or unjustified fear, and all racist and trigger-happy cops must be purged. Police unions must be defanged. Police must have connection to the community they police, and preventive social and educational programs must be funded too, which Reaganomics/free-market ideology also cuts. It was the cops who caused the riots with their murders, and Black Lives Matter did not organize any riots. A few frustrated and angry young kids and thugs and some provocateurs did the riots. And police often kill because of fear that the person being stopped or questioned might have a gun, which emphasizes the need for the meaningful gun control which Republicans resist. These points must all be made. The simple slogan "defund the police" and the billionaire-funded cynical ads attaching it to Democrats barely scratch the surface of all these issues. But it is easier to say the slogan than to explain all these facts and needs.
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(10-20-2022, 02:07 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: I am so disappointed. I thought I would never see a House of Representatives as crazy and dedicated to destruction as the Tea Party congress after 2010. We are now likely to see a congress of cultist conspiracy freaks even more destructive, more crazy and more dedicated to taking away all real freedom and justice. The misnamed Freedom Caucus was bad enough. I wonder what the Boebert/Greene wing call themselves. Just the MAGA wing I guess has become the established name for them. It is just one reason I am feeling sad and lazy today.
We can blame the Dems for a lot of this. Most voters are naive in the extreme. If 'R' says he's a good guy, wants to lower your taxes and put the bad guys in jail, some stuffy academic response by 'D' will be ignored entirely. The 'D's need to meet the voters on their level and talk their language. That we've allowed the electorate to get this degraded in civics can be faulted on societal decisions made in the past, but it is what it is.
Intelligence is not knowledge and knowledge is not wisdom, but they all play well together.
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(10-20-2022, 06:11 PM)David Horn Wrote: (10-20-2022, 02:07 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: I am so disappointed. I thought I would never see a House of Representatives as crazy and dedicated to destruction as the Tea Party congress after 2010. We are now likely to see a congress of cultist conspiracy freaks even more destructive, more crazy and more dedicated to taking away all real freedom and justice. The misnamed Freedom Caucus was bad enough. I wonder what the Boebert/Greene wing call themselves. Just the MAGA wing I guess has become the established name for them. It is just one reason I am feeling sad and lazy today.
We can blame the Dems for a lot of this. Most voters are naive in the extreme. If 'R' says he's a good guy, wants to lower your taxes and put the bad guys in jail, some stuffy academic response by 'D' will be ignored entirely. The 'D's need to meet the voters on their level and talk their language. That we've allowed the electorate to get this degraded in civics can be faulted on societal decisions made in the past, but it is what it is.
Assuming my explanation of the "defund the police" issue above is too academic, how would you suggest talking about it on "their" level? Can talking on their level really counter the slogan?
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(10-20-2022, 07:08 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: (10-20-2022, 06:11 PM)David Horn Wrote: (10-20-2022, 02:07 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: I am so disappointed. I thought I would never see a House of Representatives as crazy and dedicated to destruction as the Tea Party congress after 2010. We are now likely to see a congress of cultist conspiracy freaks even more destructive, more crazy and more dedicated to taking away all real freedom and justice. The misnamed Freedom Caucus was bad enough. I wonder what the Boebert/Greene wing call themselves. Just the MAGA wing I guess has become the established name for them. It is just one reason I am feeling sad and lazy today.
We can blame the Dems for a lot of this. Most voters are naive in the extreme. If 'R' says he's a good guy, wants to lower your taxes and put the bad guys in jail, some stuffy academic response by 'D' will be ignored entirely. The 'D's need to meet the voters on their level and talk their language. That we've allowed the electorate to get this degraded in civics can be faulted on societal decisions made in the past, but it is what it is.
Assuming my explanation of the "defund the police" issue above is too academic, how would you suggest talking about it on "their" level? Can talking on their level really counter the slogan?
Look at what works for the Reps and what doesn't for the Dems. Facts and data -- even photos -- don't cut it. The Rs use emotion, 100%. They have since Lee Atwater found the formula with Willie Horton. That's all they do. Trump put on steroids. So how do you talk about somethiing like 'defund the police (who thought that was a good idea, btw). Try taking the cop's side. What cop wants to handle some domestic dispute. It's dangerous, cops get shot all the time and they aren't trained to handle mental breakdoowns. Wouldn't it be better to send mental health techs -- people without guns -- and let them talk them down. The same formula works for sheltering the homeless and dealing with drug addicts.
Then, there's the other side. Ds must never allow the Rs to misrepresent them -- not ever. The best examples of doing that are the debates where Val Demings in Florida and Stacy Abrams in Georgia, though Tim Ryan was pretty good too, took action immediately! All three had opponenets who wished to paint them as something else, and they did exactly what they should have done; they took personal offense and corrected their opponents. Note: the outrage came first. Dems too often come across as too detached and, frankly calculating. It doesn't work.
Too often the Ds dither when action -- even poorly thought-through action -- is needed. Two examples and I'll shut up. On 1/6/20, when the actions of Trump were blatant and obvious to all, Nancy Pelosi shoujd have concluded the evening by calling for an impeachment vote on the spot. Example 2: The Saudis and UAE stabbed Biden in the back over oil. He should have paused miltary coppoeration and arms sales immediatley. Both would have gained the admiration of the voting public who think that politicains never do anything but CYA. Both would have been seen as 'cover OUR ass.
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10-21-2022, 11:36 AM
(This post was last modified: 10-22-2022, 09:28 AM by pbrower2a.)
The secretive, but extremely well-funded Dark Money groups are very good at what they do: creating visceral fears in potential voters. They know what works, and it creates doubt and even support for their chosen nominees. The nominee goes along in the belief that winning is worth degradation of the political process into a climate of fear and distrust on behalf of people who have an even larger stake in the political process. These groups, for all that I can tell, seek to transform America into the sort of country in which survival is a privilege to be earned through undemanding, uncritical obedience to some Master Class. See also "slavery" and "serfdom".
I may tire of pounding this message, but those who contribute the toxic ads (they are offered so late in the campaign that no refutation is easy) have a barely-hidden agenda: transformation of the political process into a two-tiered debate in which the nominal candidate of the Dark Money interest gets to pose as a nice family person while the Democrat becomes a dangerous radical for failing to believe that the best situation possible for the common man is to be a helpless serf on behalf of people who believe that economic power rightly decides politics, and that nothing rightly gets in its way. In effect,
Profit, profit over everything!
Damn the public, give 'em the shaft!
We don't want any Commie unions
Our profit to annoy!
Send the liberals and their pinko friends
All on one-way journeys to Hanoi!
(to the tune of the German national anthem).
These interests would delight in reducing Humanity into desperate automatons at a very low level on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. easy to control due to economic insecurity. Their ideology is nearly fascist, although they dare not admit that their dream is something so alien and horrible as Mussolini's Italy (if eventually a warmongering power) or Pinochet's Chile (if cautious about military adventures, the most likely things to bring down an oppressive regime). The debate on wars for profit is not yet ready, but if there is any pattern about who starts wars (dictatorial and despotic regimes are most likely to start them due to the callousness of the cliques in power) and who most likely loses them (if the war isn't over fast, then leaders able to frame the struggle as one between transcendent Good and Evil) get a partial win through survival and win by winning smart. Think of Churchill and FDR in the last completed Crisis.
Twist Good and Evil around in World War II, and the Axis Powers (which include a once-shaky Weimar Republic that solves its political problems without Hitler and a "Showa Democracy" defeat a Klan-ruled USA, and expose bodies stacked like cordwood in "Kloncentration Kamps", to fit KKK nomenclature.
People who believe that their economic power gives them the right to put workers in thrall are -- let's not sugar-coat this judgment --
EVIL!
We have come excessively to rely upon Big Business and Big Government to solve our problems for us; by doing so we make ourselves dependents upon people who consider us expendable. They will ravage the environment for quick bucks because nothing gets in the way. They drive wages to bare survival. They make education, housing, and medical care fiendishly-expensive luxuries. They basically impose a feudal stratification upon "free enterprise" in which the "free" part of "free enterprise" is that the owners and administrators are free to do anything to a prole. This is like saying that the master on a plantation deserves the freedom to wield the lash upon his slaves.
I look at the labor-management relations of Nazi Germany as an evil in itself. Even without the genocide and warmongering, Nazi Germany was a workers' Hell in which workers endured the lowest industrial wages in Europe (such was a reality before the Nazis. but it intensified). Remember well that whatever Christian upbringing the tycoons, executives, and big rural landowners had about the semi-pagan culture of the Nazis they got what they wanted in economics from the Nazis. They got super-cheap labor that could be consigned to labor camps if they slacked off, griped, or asserted natural rights. They got easy profits from military contracts. They got the suppression of labor unions. They got the Communist party outlawed. They got to profiteer from labor camps. They got privatization of public assets on the cheap. They got education reduced to, after very basic education for raw literacy and numeracy, reduced to propaganda and limited training. They got economic competition from Jews obliterated. They got what they wanted until the British and Americans bombed the Hell out of their war-profiteering industries and the Red Army set up regimes that confiscated their estates and giant sweat-shop factories.
Our political institutions were designed for the absence of bloated, monopolistic, bureaucratized organizations capable of buying the political process. We tame those or we break them up, or we lose our democracy. We separate political and economic power lest most of us become thralls of those elites. We end up with the worst combination of plantation-style inequity and Commie-style bureaucracy as an economic norm; we could end up with a system that has the repression of Commies with the regimentation of a military service and the inequity of a Junker-Zaibatsu order.
Maybe we need giant enterprises to process oil and make automobiles. Given the choice between K-Mart and boutique-like shops. many of us chose K-Mart to the detriment of the community behind the small shopkeepers. We got "everyday low prices" instead of manufacturer's suggested list price, and lost the small shopkeepers. We let the regional banks devour local banks, and then such entities as Bank of America, Chase, Wells Fargo, Huntington, and Citibank devour those. We let Exxon and Mobil merge (why!). We have let media giants devour city newspapers and local broadcasters, and cable and internet suppliers. Lose your choice as a customer and you also lose choice in employment.
At least with those small shops you got something better suited to your needs, and you kept it not only because it was expensive to replace, but also because you got something that you thought precious. Instead we rely more heavily upon Wal-Mart and some even shadier big companies to sell us huge amounts of consumer schlock in a conduit from sweatshops in China to landfills in the USA.
Freedom depends upon intellectual sophistication. I'm not saying that people can avoid tyranny by loving Beethoven's Ninth Symphony (ironically a Nazi favorite) or Russian operatic masterpieces. People who learn to apply rational thought are less gullible when facing propaganda whether Communist or corporatist. Rational thought eviscerates insane ideologies and destructive cults.
So far as I can tell, neither the Moonies not $cientology kills. MAGA has killed.
We need be smart enough to recognize evil when it appears and wise enough to resist it as early as possible before the baby crocodile becomes a man-eater.
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.
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Speak in active terms that arouse emotions. Yes I agree, although it would have to be mentioned that the health techs need to be funded, and aren't.
Joe is slow Joe too often, too hesitant to take strong action at times.
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(10-21-2022, 11:37 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: Speak in active terms that arouse emotions. Yes I agree, although it would have to be mentioned that the health techs need to be funded, and aren't.
Joe is slow Joe too often, too hesitant to take strong action at times.
On point 1, that's how you bring that up. We need X because it helps the Y you love, but X will cost money. Make the Rs talk about not helping cops or whatever group they're flaunting at the moment. And yes, the Silent Dems -- all of them -- are slow to act and way too cautious. It's noticed.
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10-21-2022, 05:56 PM
(This post was last modified: 10-22-2022, 01:09 AM by Eric the Green.)
Weapons of mass delusion: when the Republican Party lost its mind. Indeed, and that means the people of "America" have lost their minds, because delusional Republican Party are poised to win the midterms. Will we survive the rule of this Classic Xer-type delusional Party in "America"??
WEAPONS OF MASS DELUSION! What we've got here, is, failure to communicate. And we're gonna git it.
Billionaires are funding huge numbers of ads for total creeps and incompetents like Ron Johnson, Dr. Oz, Herschel Walker, Mr. Vance, and others, saying "oh, invaders are coming across the Democrats' open borders! Democrat prosecutors are letting the criminals out! Liberal policies are causing inflation!" My theory is that the companies are deliberately price-gouging us, not only because under Republican neoliberalism they can get away with it and reap huge profits, but because they know the inflation that they create will hurt Democrats' chances in the midterms and bring Biden's approval rating down, and the resulting Republican policies will vastly benefit them and their total assault on Nature.
Get ready for our country to be ruled by Paul Gosar, Matt Gaetz, Marjory Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, who are wrong and destructive on every single issue that affects all of us!!!! MAGA Republican candidates are able and determined to put our country under the thumb of the billionaires that fund them, and of the fascists, prejudiced leaders and cults who stoke their followers. Racism, Religious Extremist Authority, QAnon and conspiracy culture, xenophobia, anti-vax, misogyny, homophobia, environmental destruction, trickle-down economics/"anti-socialism", democracy denial, anti-journalism, gun massacres, cult worship, political violence, attacking election workers, you name it. They are ALL WRONG. And David Brooks calls Keri Lake and her Party a "working class party"? Even on PBS we have pundits who distort and obstruct the truth about this fascist Party. These freaks will dictate to Republican leaders in congress what policies to follow, and will have their way.
How can we react to this takeover of "America" by the Classic Xer crazies? Just give up and cry? Get guns and join a liberal militia? Leave the USA and go to some other declining country? Get mad and yell at our opponents? Try to be the voice of reason and get in a position to communicate like this author, Robert Draper? Try to help spread his message? Try to get the Democrats off the dime? Donate and work for Democrats despite the odds? Can anything work and save our sanity? I don't know at this point. If I could, I'd like to run up to Greene and sock her to the ground. But she is a cross-fit trainer, so I'd have to get more fit to do this. Or maybe get some gangs together and confront their gangs? Like antifa does? Meanwhile some of my new age and holistic friends would say to love them and win them over and sing kumbaya. I tend to to think it's not a viable approach; these creeps are so far gone it is truly incredible. It's fight or flight time. Time to get our adrenaline in gear and that solar plexus going!
So can any of these 4 become the next Trump?
Note that Greene (Xer, born 1974) has a 16-6 horoscope score, same as Joe Biden. She is a demogogic threat to be the next Trump and run for president and win! She is a champion fund-raiser.
Paul Gosar (late Jones Boomer born 1958) got himself censured by congress, and that shows he doesn't seem to have much of the knack of persuasive power overall and tends to go overboard. He scores only 4-9 as a USA potential presidential candidate. Somehow Greene can be just as outrageous in her views as Paul but she has a better knack.
Matt Gaetz (born 1982, early Millennial) got himself in trouble with scandal, and maybe the law, so he might not have the knack either. But let's see what the "stars" say. One thing for sure we know, and that is that he LOOKS like the total creep that he is. Well, the stars say his creepiness might have some appeal to his fellow creeps, with a 9-5 score, just one negative point more than Trump's 9-4 score. Like most other candidates, he could beat Kamala Harris easily, or some other Democratic Party loser-- of which the Democratic Party has an abundance to choose from.
Lauren Boebert (born 1986, Millennial) is probably the worst one the lot, or at least tied with Greene. She is the pistol-packing mama, sure to appeal to Classic Xer. As the potential next Trump she has much the same score as Matt Gaetz, 11-6.
The birth times are unknown for these 4 candidates, so the scores could change a bit if they become known or if the scoring system changes a bit after presidential elections.
Traditionally, congress representatives don't have the status to run for president and win, but these days you can never underestimate the appeal of total creeps to today's creepy America.
One Trumpist who may have some status if elected governor is Kari Lake of AZ. Born in 1969 (Gen X), David Brooks says she is a rising star, and that she is leading a "working class Party" I guess so, if "working" means to implement extreme right-wing policies and defy federal law and obstruct democracy. Despite supporting Obama's opposition to the wars as a Democrat from 2008 to 2012, she has now totally embraced complete anti-vax conspiracy theory against vaccines, mandates and masks and endorses remedies proven to be phony and dangerous. She would deport all illegal immigrants and build Trump's wall in AZ. Abortion is a sin to her, and would sign a total ban if passed, and she opposes laws against transgender discrimination. She is against any gun control. She opposes what she deems "woke curriculum," such as "critical race theory." She would scale back opportunities for people to vote.
"Lake falsely claimed President Joe Biden did not receive 81 million votes and that Arizona (which was won by Biden in the 2020 presidential election) was actually won by Trump.[49][52] After the 2021 Maricopa County presidential ballot audit found no evidence of election fraud, she demanded the election be "decertified"—a legal impossibility,[49] as such a process does not exist.[53] She endorsed a false assertion by Trump spokeswoman Liz Harrington that Democrats use mail-in ballots to rig elections. Lake tweeted quotes made by Sidney Powell on Lou Dobbs Tonight falsely asserting there was a sweeping election fraud conspiracy. She has advocated imprisoning Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (who is running for governor in 2022 as a Democrat) on baseless and unspecified allegations of criminality related to the 2020 election.[49] Lake also called for imprisoning journalists.[49] Lake repeatedly and falsely claimed that defendants arrested in connection with the January 6 United States Capitol attack were being "being held in prison without being charged"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kari_Lake
She has opposed funding for education movements, but also is against sales taxes on groceries. Does she have working class appeal? Does she support trickle-down economics? I don't know much about her policies in that regard.
"Democratic Party strategists are watching Arizona's Kari Lake with growing alarm.... Why it matters: As some see it, Lake — a 2020 election denier — could easily win the state's gubernatorial race and threaten its 2024 election processes. And with the talent she's already displayed even as a political novice, they see her potential to soar to a vice presidential spot or a post-Trump presidential candidacy."
"David Axelrod, another key former Obama adviser, offered this assessment of Lake's 20+ years in Arizona local TV before her entrance last year into politics: "If you get a candidate who has the performance skills of a major-market local TV anchor and the philosophy and thinking of Steve Bannon, that's a potent and dangerous combination...." See:
https://www.axios.com/2022/10/15/kari-la...tions-maga
The alarm is well justified. She scores 16-4 on my horoscope scoring system. I don't know her birthtime yet, so this score could shift a bit if it becomes known.
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Let's not despair until despair is fully justified. Insanity may rule for a while, but it has a short shelf life. With the obvious exception of the true whacknuts, most people can't feast on total nonsense for long, but, unfortunately, the damage can be huge before the fever breaks.
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(10-22-2022, 08:45 AM)David Horn Wrote: Let's not despair until despair is fully justified. Insanity may rule for a while, but it has a short shelf life. With the obvious exception of the true whacknuts, most people can't feast on total nonsense for long, but, unfortunately, the damage can be huge before the fever breaks.
That's the rub now. Insanity won't rule forever, because in the USA the pendulum swings between the center and insanity. But the huge damage done could be fatal because we only have 10 years before the tipping points set in and we go on an irreversible course toward the end of civilization. And in that decline there will be no further turnings. We can only swing so many times into insanity before the pendulum breaks. And each swing toward insanity is wider than before.
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(10-24-2022, 09:44 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: (10-22-2022, 08:45 AM)David Horn Wrote: Let's not despair until despair is fully justified. Insanity may rule for a while, but it has a short shelf life. With the obvious exception of the true whacknuts, most people can't feast on total nonsense for long, but, unfortunately, the damage can be huge before the fever breaks.
That's the rub now. Insanity won't rule forever, because in the USA the pendulum swings between the center and insanity. But the huge damage done could be fatal because we only have 10 years before the tipping points set in and we go on an irreversible course toward the end of civilization. And in that decline there will be no further turnings. We can only swing so many times into insanity before the pendulum breaks. And each swing toward insanity is wider than before.
Yes, in global warming we have a driver that has no interest in our timelines or secondary issues. The young have to know this. So when do they finally take charge (we Boomers are already dying out and the Xers don't seem to care). After all, it's their world. We can't make them take it seriously if they won't.
Intelligence is not knowledge and knowledge is not wisdom, but they all play well together.
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(10-24-2022, 11:51 AM)David Horn Wrote: (10-24-2022, 09:44 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: (10-22-2022, 08:45 AM)David Horn Wrote: Let's not despair until despair is fully justified. Insanity may rule for a while, but it has a short shelf life. With the obvious exception of the true whacknuts, most people can't feast on total nonsense for long, but, unfortunately, the damage can be huge before the fever breaks.
That's the rub now. Insanity won't rule forever, because in the USA the pendulum swings between the center and insanity. But the huge damage done could be fatal because we only have 10 years before the tipping points set in and we go on an irreversible course toward the end of civilization. And in that decline there will be no further turnings. We can only swing so many times into insanity before the pendulum breaks. And each swing toward insanity is wider than before.
Yes, in global warming we have a driver that has no interest in our timelines or secondary issues. The young have to know this. So when do they finally take charge (we Boomers are already dying out and the Xers don't seem to care). After all, it's their world. We can't make them take it seriously if they won't.
Judging by the opinion polls, which I have no reason to doubt, they are not taking it seriously and they don't care.
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10-27-2022, 11:39 AM
(This post was last modified: 10-27-2022, 02:41 PM by Eric the Green.)
Trump disapproval: 53.9%, approval: 41.8%
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pol...ald-trump/
Biden disapproval: 53.1%, approval: 42.2%
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/bid...al-rating/
fivethirtyeight.org senate race estimates today:
Nevada: blue +1%
PA: blue +2%
GA: blue +2%
OH: red +1%
WI: red +3%
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/
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Ordinarily the people who say "the only poll that counts is the electoral count" are the fellows 10% behind in the week containing Halloween. These days polling is far trickier, as landline owners tend to be conservative Republicans because others have abandoned landline phones in favor of cell phones. Some models neglect early votes.
The Dark Money still forces its way into the political debate just as people are unable to respond, of course to the benefit of those who believe that those who own the gold have some God-given right to put those who lack it in thrall. Their god is Mammon.
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.
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Donald Trump dissapproval rating went below 15% today. Let's hope it sticks. Polls differ.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pol...ald-trump/
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(10-28-2022, 12:34 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Donald Trump dissapproval rating went below 15% today. Let's hope it sticks. Polls differ.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pol...ald-trump/
Today Biden is about 11 points unfavorable and Trump is -13.7
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11-03-2022, 12:44 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-03-2022, 12:45 PM by Eric the Green.)
The polls have turned against sanity today, especially in the Senate.
538 estimate, probably optimistic from a Democratic Party standpoint:
Senate races
Georgia red Walker +1 (latest poll +7)
Nevada red Laxalt +1 (latest poll +5)
Pennsylvania blue Fetterman +1 (latest poll red Oz +1)
Ohio red Vance +1 (latest poll +5)
Arizona blue Kelly +3 (latest poll even)
New Hampshire blue Hassan +3 (latest poll red Bolduc +1)
Wisconsin red Johnson +4 (latest poll +2)
North Carolina red Budd +4 (latest polls +7 and +1)
Washington blue Murray +6 (latest poll +2)
Florida red Rubio +7 (latest poll +7)
Iowa red Grassley +7 (latest poll +11)
Generic House red +1
latest polls blue (latest polls blue +7, +6, +1, even, red +1)
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/
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(10-20-2022, 05:09 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: (10-20-2022, 11:47 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: (10-20-2022, 02:07 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: I am so disappointed. I thought I would never see a House of Representatives as crazy and dedicated to destruction as the Tea Party congress after 2010. We are now likely to see a congress of cultist conspiracy freaks even more destructive, more crazy and more dedicated to taking away all real freedom and justice. The misnamed Freedom Caucus was bad enough. I wonder what the Boebert/Greene wing call themselves. Just the MAGA wing I guess has become the established name for them. It is just one reason I am feeling sad and lazy today.
The fault lies with us Americans on a whole. If not, then our neighbors, whether the cultists themselves or those who see QAnon, the John Birch Society, the Dark Money plutocrats, authoritarian religiosity, and the militia movements as useful people in achieving their agenda. Those cultists offer conservatives their agenda in pure expression in economics and culture, but those cultists will take away freedom, and not only from liberals.
We liberals see no reason to take freedom from the conservatives. The conservatives will be necessary in the event that someone ever gets the power to "defund the police" or impose Critical Race Theory, and conservatives may be exactly the ones to know how to stop inflation (quit printing money or stop creating easy credit). Conservatives have at times been necessary in the defense of liberty, and if there has ever been a time in which conservatives must defend liberty from domestic threats, then now is the time.
Aside from some lonely Stalinists, Maoists, Hoxha groupies, and Trotskyites, America has no meaningful Far Left. Even the Communist party of the USA is trying to go mainstream. I wish that I could say of the Far Right that it consisted only of fascist pigs who prance around in Klan robes or brown shirts, or spew mirror-image Marxism in their John Birch cells, while clueless about the ridicule that they get from the rest of America. I regret that such is not so. The Hard Right is divisive, cruel, and mad. It is now hard to distinguish the Republican Party from the John Birch Society in agenda and ideology. It is not that the Birchers have gone mainstream; it is instead that the GOP has gone in the Bircher direction.
We know what Marxism is. Mirror-image Marxism is the endorsement of the ugliest critique of capitalism as a defense of class privilege as an ideal. The difference between mirror-image Marxists from real Marxists is that the mirror-image Marxists kill to preserve the sort of social order that is most vulnerable to a proletarian revolution. All social orders have some combination of repression, inequality, and hierarchy, but those high on all three are the ones most likely to implode under stress... like Imperial Russia. In the meantime repression kills in the prisons and concentration camps' inequality starves and humiliates most people; hierarchy bungles commerce and wars.
Tyranny of any kind demonstrates that some conditions are worse than Death itself.
Right, although we very much need "critical race theory", which really means full education about all that we have done in the USA to repress various ethnic groups, as well as all our other mistakes, so we can learn to do better, instead of using the excuse that "critical race theory" will make poor young students unhappy with their country.
We must choose the times and places of ideological battles carefully. We all know about the racist heritage of America, but in the meantime we have people who would delight in shutting down all dissent against monopolistic, corrupt, crony capitalism that scraps all pretenses to equality in favor of the physical or metaphoric lash.
Of course we are right to oppose police brutality that does little to instil respect for the necessary work of suppressing crime and making streets safe (and that includes from drunks and speeders! Some bad driving is literally criminal, and that deserves suppression because it kills!)
Quote: "Defund the police" is a slogan used by some protesters, but is not said by any Democratic Party politicians, yet nevertheless is being used against them to great effect in billionaire-funded ads. What the protesters and some politicians really mean by this idea is that social and health services have been reduced in the last 40 years by neoliberal Reaganomics, leaving the police to do the job of these health and social-work professionals instead of the big job of policing that the police need to do. So funds may need to be shifted to the health and social services so that the police can focus on policing. And if there's a need for more police to do actual policing beyond this, due to rising crime, it can be and is being funded. But these police must be well trained not to kill on the basis of race or unjustified fear, and all racist and trigger-happy cops must be purged. Police unions must be defanged. Police must have connection to the community they police, and preventive social and educational programs must be funded too, which Reaganomics/free-market ideology also cuts. It was the cops who caused the riots with their murders, and Black Lives Matter did not organize any riots. A few frustrated and angry young kids and thugs and some provocateurs did the riots. And police often kill because of fear that the person being stopped or questioned might have a gun, which emphasizes the need for the meaningful gun control which Republicans resist. These points must all be made. The simple slogan "defund the police" and the billionaire-funded cynical ads attaching it to Democrats barely scratch the surface of all these issues. But it is easier to say the slogan than to explain all these facts and needs.
The Hard Right makes it a point to attack arcane, ill-thought-out positions on the other side so that it can impose its own agenda of mass hardship for workers on behalf of irresponsible elites. That Hard Right agenda is itself arcane and ill-thought-out, as it gives most people little stake in the system.
We need more, and better police. Heck, I reported a Michigan state highway that got little attention by the state troopers but has had lots of speeders because it is straight and flat. It has narrow shoulders and it has some residential areas, along which I live. Some people were surprised to be picked up for speeding on Michigan state highway (for the prevention of some shame of some people surprised at getting tickets I am not giving the number. Such people might hate me for what I did. I had a dog at the time, and some people have children).
It is best that there be far fewer firearms than we now have, and compulsory buy-backs would make life safer for us all. One should have a compelling reason to have a firearm. It's not even good for preventing spouse abuse, as the abuser who gets the gun can seize it at some point. (I'd like to see judgments against spouse abuse to include "no firearms in the house"). As I have suggested, dogs are even stronger deterrents to crime than a random gun.
Black Lives Matters behaved itself well. It did not thwart law enforcement. Yes, there were people who tried to exploit the demonstrations, but people who brought video cameras to document any police brutality often ended up taking video of criminal acts from assaults to arson that those amateur photographers turned over to police and prosecutors. Black Lives Matters does not mean "go ahead and torch a police car" or "loot K-Mart".
Most of us can tolerate rigid law enforcement so long as such is fair. I am a liberal on many things, but not crime. Better law enforcement makes us safer and compels us to find solutions other than violence to personal difficulties. Yes, neighborhood-based policing is more effective. Most people are good even in the nastiest slums, and those who live there deserve to have their communities divested of the bad guys who prey on those who have little.
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.
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