The Partisan Divide on Issues

[Einzige]

You are braindead 

I live in rural Illinois. I hear white rural Illinoisans grousing about Chicago. But the fact of the matter is that more rural Illinousans are on food stamps than Chicagoans. And the raw produce of Illinois is shipped to Chicago for processing.

Eventually it will become a class war. And Red and Blue will be shown for the phantasm they are.

[Classic-Xer]

(12-30-2020, 09:25 PM)Einzige Wrote: You are braindead 

I live in rural Illinois. I hear white rural Illinoisans grousing about Chicago. But the fact of the matter is that more rural Illinousans are on food stamps than Chicagoans. And the raw produce of Illinois is shipped to Chicago for processing.

Eventually it will become a class war. And Red and Blue will be shown for the phantasm they are.

The population of Chicago is about 2/3 of the population of the entire state and you're telling me that there are more poor living in rural areas who are on food stamps than there are poor people living in Chicago who are on food stamps? Who's brain dead as you say? We saw some class warfare going on in Chicago and else where over the summer and we will most likely see more of it next summer and the summer after and so on. Like it or not, you're going to have a choice between Blue or Red. As far as I can tell, you're much closer to being a Blue than a Red at this point. All you have to do to become a member of the Blue tribe is accept the truth that the rich Democrats have complete control over you, whatever issue that you have and more or less function as living Gods.

[Classic-Xer]

(12-26-2020, 07:05 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(12-26-2020, 01:20 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(12-26-2020, 01:09 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(12-26-2020, 12:17 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(12-25-2020, 11:31 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: I voted to break gridlock just like you and the Democrats and a group of pesky GOP's voted to do.

I agree that neither party is warm to the the other's agenda, so opposition is to be expected.  As long as we have the divided government model as the ideal rather than the exception it will continue to be this way.  On the other hand, the GOP has taken opposition to a whole new level, opposing everything and compromising never.  Why the need to push obvious instructional advantages further than necessary is a mystery.  They have an innate pro-GOP bias in the Senate, and structural advantage electing Presidents.  Isn't that enough?

Interesting that Classic claims to be voting against gridlock, when that is ALL that the party he votes for ever does.

A slight exaggeration.  They will vote tax cuts for the right, to increase the division of wealth.  They usually support a strong military.  That Trump went against that trend this time is unusual.  But on the whole you are correct.  They have been racist enough to oppose anything Obama proposes or to undo anything he tried to do.  As most of that was to support the American working man, they have wound up against the American working man.  That is part of why I expect a collapse of the old values.

We could also call gridlock "voting to stop the government from doing things," to keep things stagnant in place. That's what tax cuts accomplish, which rob the government of the means to change things, and just to protect the great wealth that exists. Arguably, though not always, the purpose of the strong military is the same: to protect the interests of the wealthy abroad, and/or to stop communism and other movements that threaten them; to protect the establishment and the status quo. Also, to protect the wealth of the military-industrial complex, and to stop immigration. That's what voting for Republican gridlock means, more generally-speaking.

The government doesn't need as much taxation now that it's fully embraced raising debt ceilings then borrowing and spending. It's going to be a pretty big mess when it crashes but whatever, it will be viewed as Democratic problem that most Americans will longer be directly related by then. So, the question is will you still be alive or dead by then? Oh, the other question is, if you're dead, does death grant you a pass or guarantee you a place in suffering for an entire lifetime?

[pbrower2a]

(12-30-2020, 09:08 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(12-30-2020, 08:10 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(12-30-2020, 08:01 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(12-26-2020, 10:51 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Good point. The economic elites want no real change in American economic life. The tycoons want most of Humanity dependent upon them to the extent of accepting abject misery as a blessing instead of a curse. America's executive nomenklatura -- and that is just about what it is -- act increasingly like its old Soviet equivalent as administrators and enforcers. These people claim to stand for Free Enterprise, but even this term can lend itself to Orwellian Newspeak: it is not so much the possibility of people competing with the elites as it is that Enterprise be free to do what it must to squelch competition.

The neoliberal era has been an attempt to restore the Gilded Age, but unlike the Gilded Age it is without elite competition. It is the worst of plutocracy and barracks socialism melding themselves into a nightmare. When its intellectual pretense proves lacking, it turns to the most anti-intellectual pol in American history, Donald Trump, as a savior.

Gridlock thwarts change, and it usually dies as the 3T gives way to the 4T.

You didn't want change either. You wanted things to go back to the way things were before Trump entered office. Do you remember the picture of the cake of a government that you made the mistake of showing me and associating with me and what I want for a government? Well, you are part of the cake and the poor working class fools who voted for Biden are the only ones who are going to be left holding it up as we depart and watch as it collapses. You're in on the take like every other worthless Democratic voter. The gridlock is to strong to die at this point which is why I see the country splitting and going separate ways. America as we know it will no longer exist and you'll need a passport to visit the America that comes out of this 4T. Oh, and if you happen to be stuck in a blue state that's too blue to change, you'll get to experience first what it's like to live in a poor third world country like Venezuela or most of Mexico or a lawless third world state like Somalia.

Ha ha, before Trump entered office? The ultimate reactionary? Don't you know when a reactionary conservative is in power, change is thwarted? When he is removed, that is change. It is the red states that support Trump that are more like third world countries. The blue states are where the money is. That's because smart people move there. Dumb people stay in areas like yours, and do the same old things and think in the same old ways.

It's pretty clear that you've never seen a real reactionary conservative in power yet. Trump more or less represents the last of the mean old conservative Democrats that you rebelled against and fought with back in the day. The blue states seems to be where the bulk of the action is right now. You keep saying that as I keep showing you where you're wrong about that and telling you what to expect as time goes on and the natural sorting out process that your seeing and experiencing now continues. The redder suburban areas are where the bulk of the real money (hard currency) is at these days. The Blue States (blue cities) are more or less living off a combination of cheap debt and federal programs.

But overseas: I'm old enough to remember Francisco Franco in Spain, Antonio Salazar in Portugal, and the Greek colonels' regime, let alone Augusto Pinochet in Chile and military juntas in Argentina and Brazil. By the time the Soviet Union became politically stale, it too was reactionary in many aspects of politics and culture. (It is telling that most of the people who sold out to the Soviet Union in its last years in America through espionage and other treachery were right-wingers... not leftists).

We obviously have never had a fully reactionary, repressive, dehumanizing regime such as those of Franco in Spain, the Greek colonels' dictatorship (oddly it kissed up often to the Soviet Union), or Pinochet's Commie-style repression in Chile. Such would require a mass culling of Americans who have an idea that freedom doesn't simply mean the right of asset-owners and their executive retainers to rape everyone else economically and obliterate anyone who gets in the way. Although the Hard Right, as mirror-image Marxists on the economy, can get their economic way to a large extent with the aid of the Tea Party (which has largely morphed into the Trump cult), it cannot yet suppress thought that holds that people exist for reasons other than their power, indulgence, and gain (P. I. G. -- the initials are intended, and I might remind you of the pigs in Orwell's modern fable about  Stalinist communism, Animal Farm). Trump may be too rakish for the tastes of the elites (who may do much the same, but more secretively), and his lapses of logic and unconventional word choices and grammar grate on the minds of most educated people. 

A fully reactionary, repressive, dehumanizing regime would have torture chambers, labor camps, and plenty of disappearances. If you are a clergyman and preach that injustice is un-Christian, then the government will pressure some religious body to terminate your ordination... and if you go 'non-denominational' and still preach something contrary to the official line you might be silenced in much the same way as Dietrich Bonhoeffer was in Nazi Germany or Jerzy Popielusko was in Communist Poland -- formally executed or assassinated. Pop music star who exudes conscience instead of official propaganda that denies conscience in favor of slavish obedience? May I remind you of Chilean folksinger Victor Jara? 

Quote:    Early in his recording career, Jara showed a knack for antagonizing conservative Chileans, releasing a traditional comic song called "La beata" that depicted a religious woman with a crush on the priest to whom she goes for confession. The song was banned on radio stations and removed from record shops, but the controversy only added to Jara's reputation among young and progressive Chileans.[12] More serious in the eyes of the Chilean right wing was Jara's growing identification with the socialist movement led by Salvador Allende. After visits to Cuba and the Soviet Union in the early 1960s, Jara had joined the Communist Party. The personal met the political in his songs about the poverty he had experienced firsthand.[12]

Jara's songs spread outside Chile and were performed by American folk artists.[13] His popularity was due not only to his songwriting skills but also to his exceptional power as a performer. He took a decisive turn toward political confrontation with his 1969 song "Preguntas por Puerto Montt" ("Questions About Puerto Montt"), which took direct aim at a government official who had ordered police to attack squatters in the town of Puerto Montt. The Chilean political situation deteriorated after the official was assassinated, and right-wing thugs beat up Jara on one occasion.[13]
In 1970, Jara supported Allende, the Popular Unity coalition candidate for president, volunteering for political work and playing free concerts.[14] He composed "Venceremos" ("We Will Triumph"), the theme song of Allende's Popular Unity movement, and welcomed Allende's election to the Chilean presidency in 1970. After the election, Jara continued to speak in support of Allende and played an important role in the new administration's efforts to reorient Chilean culture.[15]

He and his wife, Joan Jara, were key participants in a cultural renaissance that swept Chile, organizing cultural events that supported the country's new socialist government. He set poems by Pablo Neruda to music and performed at a ceremony honoring him after Neruda received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1972. Throughout rumblings of a right-wing coup, Jara held on to his teaching job at Chile's Technical University. His popular success during this time, as both a musician and a Communist, earned him a concert in Moscow. So successful was he that the Soviet Union tried to latch onto his popularity, claiming in their media that his vocal prowess was the result of surgery he had undergone while in Moscow.[16]

Backed by the United States, which opposed Allende's socialist politics, the Chilean military staged a coup d'état on September 11, 1973,[17] resulting in the death of Allende and the installation of Augusto Pinochet as dictator. At the moment of the coup, Jara was on his way to the Technical University (today the Universidad de Santiago). That night, he slept at the university along with other teachers and students, and sang to raise morale.

After the coup, Pinochet's soldiers rounded up Chileans who were believed to be involved with leftist groups, including Allende's Popular Unity party. On the morning of 12 September 1973, Jara was taken prisoner, along with thousands of others, and imprisoned inside Chile Stadium.[18][19] The guards there tortured him, smashing his hands and fingers, and then mocked him by asking him to play the guitar. Jara instead sung the Chilean protest song Venceremos. Soon after, he was killed with a gunshot to the head, and his body was riddled with more than 40 bullets.[20]

According to the BBC.com[21] "There are many conflicting accounts of Jara’s last days but the 2019 Netflix documentary Massacre at the Stadium pieces together a convincing narrative. As a famous musician and prominent supporter of Allende, Jara was swiftly recognised on his way into the stadium. An army officer threw a lit cigarette on the ground, made Jara crawl for it, then stamped on his wrists. Jara was first separated from the other detainees, then beaten and tortured in the bowels of the stadium. At one point, he defiantly sang Venceremos (We Will Win), Allende’s 1970 election anthem, through split lips. On the morning of the 16th, according to a fellow detainee, Jara asked for a pen and notebook and scribbled the lyrics to Estadio Chile, which were later smuggled out of the stadium: “How hard it is to sing when I must sing of horror/ Horror which I am living, horror which I am dying.” Two hours later, he was shot dead, then his body was riddled with machine-gun bullets and dumped in the street. He was 40."

After his murder, Jara's body was displayed at the entrance of Chile Stadium for other prisoners to see. It was later discarded outside the stadium along with the bodies of other civilian prisoners who had been killed by the Chilean Army.[22] His body was found by civil servants and brought to a morgue, where one of them was able to identify him and contact his wife, Joan. She took his body and gave him a quick and clandestine burial in the general cemetery before she fled the country into exile.

That is what it would take, Classic X'er. Fascism is Bolshevik terror and repression in the name of a reactionary or even feudal agenda of economic elites. Jara was one of those people who naively believed in the ideals of Marxism in a country with severe economic problems from which Chilean elites profited greatly, but also gravely dehumanizing to the many poor.  Mussolini, the first Fascist dictator, learned much from Lenin on how to establish state brutality and gave his secret police the name "Ceca", which is the Italian transliteration of the Russian Cheka, Lenin's secret police.   

Yes, I want some things to go back to how they were when Barack Obama was President -- when the President recognized the appropriateness of precedent and protocol, when checks and balances were beyond challenge because consequences for their short-circuiting were far worse than failing to get one's way, when people got respect and dignity in public expressions despite hardships instead of mockery, and when people accepted ethnic and religious diversity as acceptable instead of as something to mock. 

I thoroughly despise the person that Donald Trump is. He is low in emotional intelligence, as is shown in his mockery of people on the autistic spectrum. If you have ever seen Rain Man -- I am not far from being that character. Oh, sure, everyone on the autistic spectrum is different... but I am 'bad' enough that I must practically do stage acting to seem normal. I have embarrassing lapses, so that messes up my human relationships and my work record. 

America has people capable of believing any absurdity that some right-wing official offers -- even medical quackery! -- that Donald Trump has offered on COVID-19. Over a third of a million people have died in America of the Plague of Donald Trump, roughly one-thousandth of the US population. To be sure, this is negligent homicide more than outright murder, which prevents me from calling it genocide.    

...but what I most want is a return to a shared acceptance among Americans as a whole that norms vital to democracy be accepted even if -- indeed, especially if -- those norms be inconvenient. I would like to see conspiracy theories get the recognition for their absurdity; if anything, people who believe in conspiracy theories are the ones most likely to accept a conspiratorial plot that serves their agenda. I'd like to see the political  polarization  between Left and Right, much of which is cultural, disappear.      

[David Horn]

(12-30-2020, 07:29 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: I think it's pretty obvious that the business as usual mindset that Biden now represents will be unable to continue and sustain for much longer. As I've said many times, there are a lot of you and a lot of us and returning to business as usual isn't going to please or go over well with either group at this point. If I'm reading the situation correctly, the Republican base is going to hand the Democrats a couple of Senate seats in Georgia and pretty much kill whatever resistance to change that was left within the GOP. One bold move would put the Beltway Republicans/Rhinos and the Democrats in the same boat and open the door for a much more radical/revolutionary group who are more able to match the radical Left tit for tat. As far as electing Presidents, the Democrats have the structural advantage and they have had the structural advantage for quite a while now. Biden's election pretty much proved that once and for all. Biden did what Hilary should have done four years ago. The Democrats deserve to go down hard and if you happen to be reliant upon them that's too bad and it's going to really suck to be you if that's the case.

I'm not sure you're being cynical or you really believe that the Dems have an intrinsic advantage, but which ever the case, you're wrong.  The Senate and the Electoral College both give excessive weight to low-population states -- most are Republican.   That's not open for interpretation. The numbers are clear.  And your point that the radical Left is bigger and more dominant than the radical Right is equally delusional.  It's not the radical Left that has sent armed militias into the streets.  That's on the Right.  Even the more militant wing of Antifa is typically armed with pepper spray and sticks.

And having the "Democrats ... go down hard" assumes they have been in charge.  Even the conservative think tanks agree that this is a conservative era, and has been since Reagan, or even earlier.  Today's clusterfuck is directly related to conservative ideas that shamble on like zombies even after they been shown to fail time after time -- none moreso than trickle-down economics.  Maybe the opposite might be due a chance.  So yes, Social Democracy (see Scandinavia for trenchant examples) should get a shot.  At least I hope so.

[David Horn]

(12-31-2020, 12:25 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: The government doesn't need as much taxation now that it's fully embraced raising  debt ceilings then  borrowing and spending. It's going to be a pretty big mess when it crashes but whatever, it will be viewed as Democratic problem that most Americans will longer be directly related by then. So, the question is will you still be alive or dead by then? Oh, the other question is, if you're dead, does death grant you a pass or guarantee you a place in suffering for an entire lifetime?

Now, there is cynicism on stilts.  It was Saint Ronnie who started deficit spending in good times, and cutting taxes to guarantee it would stay that way.  

You're welcome to your opinion, but you don't get your own facts.

[Einzige]

The whole scheme of capitalism is laughable.

WE MUST TAX MONEY TO REINFORCE SOCIAL SAFETY NET

Why do there need to be social safety nets?

CAPITALISM

Why do we need capitalism?

MONEY

[Classic-Xer]

(12-31-2020, 04:44 PM)Einzige Wrote: The whole scheme of capitalism is laughable.

WE MUST TAX MONEY TO REINFORCE SOCIAL SAFETY NET

Why do there need to be social safety nets?

CAPITALISM

Why do we need capitalism?

MONEY

Hey Brain Dead, where would you be without capitalism? Do you ever think about that? Would you be talking to me here without capitalism? Would  our flag be planted on the moon without capitalism? Would you still be alive without capitalism?

[Classic-Xer]

(12-31-2020, 12:40 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(12-31-2020, 12:25 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: The government doesn't need as much taxation now that it's fully embraced raising  debt ceilings then  borrowing and spending. It's going to be a pretty big mess when it crashes but whatever, it will be viewed as Democratic problem that most Americans will longer be directly related by then. So, the question is will you still be alive or dead by then? Oh, the other question is, if you're dead, does death grant you a pass or guarantee you a place in suffering for an entire lifetime?

Now, there is cynicism on stilts.  It was Saint Ronnie who started deficit spending in good times, and cutting taxes to guarantee it would stay that way.  

You're welcome to your opinion, but you don't get your own facts.

You don't get your own facts either. So, who passed the Great Society and signed it into law while he was waging a needless war of attrition in South Vietnam that he had no intentions of winning? There's the splitting point dude and the beginning of the national split that occurred before Reagan entered office. What Reagan did was necessary to bring an end to the Soviet Union and the Cold War years. Show me a worthless Democrat in office who hasn't capitalized off the natural split that occurred during the 60's? So, who is going to win the war that's coming with the Left? Keep in mind, the American right won't have its hands legally bound during the war that's coming with today's Left and the Leftists race or gender won't be viewed as a factor that seems cause one to pause these days either.

So, what's Saint Joe going to do other than nod his head and go along with the rich who prefer to gamble and do business with American tax dollars who bought him his place in what's left of our American history together? So, how much government does a smaller American nation with a large population of self reliant people (low cost/low maintenance/ high yield) who are more or less equals in each others eyes who fully identify with the term American and believe in the American way really need to have these days?

[Classic-Xer]

(12-31-2020, 02:05 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(12-30-2020, 09:08 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(12-30-2020, 08:10 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(12-30-2020, 08:01 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(12-26-2020, 10:51 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Good point. The economic elites want no real change in American economic life. The tycoons want most of Humanity dependent upon them to the extent of accepting abject misery as a blessing instead of a curse. America's executive nomenklatura -- and that is just about what it is -- act increasingly like its old Soviet equivalent as administrators and enforcers. These people claim to stand for Free Enterprise, but even this term can lend itself to Orwellian Newspeak: it is not so much the possibility of people competing with the elites as it is that Enterprise be free to do what it must to squelch competition.

The neoliberal era has been an attempt to restore the Gilded Age, but unlike the Gilded Age it is without elite competition. It is the worst of plutocracy and barracks socialism melding themselves into a nightmare. When its intellectual pretense proves lacking, it turns to the most anti-intellectual pol in American history, Donald Trump, as a savior.

Gridlock thwarts change, and it usually dies as the 3T gives way to the 4T.

You didn't want change either. You wanted things to go back to the way things were before Trump entered office. Do you remember the picture of the cake of a government that you made the mistake of showing me and associating with me and what I want for a government? Well, you are part of the cake and the poor working class fools who voted for Biden are the only ones who are going to be left holding it up as we depart and watch as it collapses. You're in on the take like every other worthless Democratic voter. The gridlock is to strong to die at this point which is why I see the country splitting and going separate ways. America as we know it will no longer exist and you'll need a passport to visit the America that comes out of this 4T. Oh, and if you happen to be stuck in a blue state that's too blue to change, you'll get to experience first what it's like to live in a poor third world country like Venezuela or most of Mexico or a lawless third world state like Somalia.

Ha ha, before Trump entered office? The ultimate reactionary? Don't you know when a reactionary conservative is in power, change is thwarted? When he is removed, that is change. It is the red states that support Trump that are more like third world countries. The blue states are where the money is. That's because smart people move there. Dumb people stay in areas like yours, and do the same old things and think in the same old ways.

It's pretty clear that you've never seen a real reactionary conservative in power yet. Trump more or less represents the last of the mean old conservative Democrats that you rebelled against and fought with back in the day. The blue states seems to be where the bulk of the action is right now. You keep saying that as I keep showing you where you're wrong about that and telling you what to expect as time goes on and the natural sorting out process that your seeing and experiencing now continues. The redder suburban areas are where the bulk of the real money (hard currency) is at these days. The Blue States (blue cities) are more or less living off a combination of cheap debt and federal programs.

But overseas: I'm old enough to remember Francisco Franco in Spain, Antonio Salazar in Portugal, and the Greek colonels' regime, let alone Augusto Pinochet in Chile and military juntas in Argentina and Brazil. By the time the Soviet Union became politically stale, it too was reactionary in many aspects of politics and culture. (It is telling that most of the people who sold out to the Soviet Union in its last years in America through espionage and other treachery were right-wingers... not leftists).

We obviously have never had a fully reactionary, repressive, dehumanizing regime such as those of Franco in Spain, the Greek colonels' dictatorship (oddly it kissed up often to the Soviet Union), or Pinochet's Commie-style repression in Chile. Such would require a mass culling of Americans who have an idea that freedom doesn't simply mean the right of asset-owners and their executive retainers to rape everyone else economically and obliterate anyone who gets in the way. Although the Hard Right, as mirror-image Marxists on the economy, can get their economic way to a large extent with the aid of the Tea Party (which has largely morphed into the Trump cult), it cannot yet suppress thought that holds that people exist for reasons other than their power, indulgence, and gain (P. I. G. -- the initials are intended, and I might remind you of the pigs in Orwell's modern fable about  Stalinist communism, Animal Farm). Trump may be too rakish for the tastes of the elites (who may do much the same, but more secretively), and his lapses of logic and unconventional word choices and grammar grate on the minds of most educated people. 

A fully reactionary, repressive, dehumanizing regime would have torture chambers, labor camps, and plenty of disappearances. If you are a clergyman and preach that injustice is un-Christian, then the government will pressure some religious body to terminate your ordination... and if you go 'non-denominational' and still preach something contrary to the official line you might be silenced in much the same way as Dietrich Bonhoeffer was in Nazi Germany or Jerzy Popielusko was in Communist Poland -- formally executed or assassinated. Pop music star who exudes conscience instead of official propaganda that denies conscience in favor of slavish obedience? May I remind you of Chilean folksinger Victor Jara? 

Quote:    Early in his recording career, Jara showed a knack for antagonizing conservative Chileans, releasing a traditional comic song called "La beata" that depicted a religious woman with a crush on the priest to whom she goes for confession. The song was banned on radio stations and removed from record shops, but the controversy only added to Jara's reputation among young and progressive Chileans.[12] More serious in the eyes of the Chilean right wing was Jara's growing identification with the socialist movement led by Salvador Allende. After visits to Cuba and the Soviet Union in the early 1960s, Jara had joined the Communist Party. The personal met the political in his songs about the poverty he had experienced firsthand.[12]

Jara's songs spread outside Chile and were performed by American folk artists.[13] His popularity was due not only to his songwriting skills but also to his exceptional power as a performer. He took a decisive turn toward political confrontation with his 1969 song "Preguntas por Puerto Montt" ("Questions About Puerto Montt"), which took direct aim at a government official who had ordered police to attack squatters in the town of Puerto Montt. The Chilean political situation deteriorated after the official was assassinated, and right-wing thugs beat up Jara on one occasion.[13]
In 1970, Jara supported Allende, the Popular Unity coalition candidate for president, volunteering for political work and playing free concerts.[14] He composed "Venceremos" ("We Will Triumph"), the theme song of Allende's Popular Unity movement, and welcomed Allende's election to the Chilean presidency in 1970. After the election, Jara continued to speak in support of Allende and played an important role in the new administration's efforts to reorient Chilean culture.[15]

He and his wife, Joan Jara, were key participants in a cultural renaissance that swept Chile, organizing cultural events that supported the country's new socialist government. He set poems by Pablo Neruda to music and performed at a ceremony honoring him after Neruda received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1972. Throughout rumblings of a right-wing coup, Jara held on to his teaching job at Chile's Technical University. His popular success during this time, as both a musician and a Communist, earned him a concert in Moscow. So successful was he that the Soviet Union tried to latch onto his popularity, claiming in their media that his vocal prowess was the result of surgery he had undergone while in Moscow.[16]

Backed by the United States, which opposed Allende's socialist politics, the Chilean military staged a coup d'état on September 11, 1973,[17] resulting in the death of Allende and the installation of Augusto Pinochet as dictator. At the moment of the coup, Jara was on his way to the Technical University (today the Universidad de Santiago). That night, he slept at the university along with other teachers and students, and sang to raise morale.

After the coup, Pinochet's soldiers rounded up Chileans who were believed to be involved with leftist groups, including Allende's Popular Unity party. On the morning of 12 September 1973, Jara was taken prisoner, along with thousands of others, and imprisoned inside Chile Stadium.[18][19] The guards there tortured him, smashing his hands and fingers, and then mocked him by asking him to play the guitar. Jara instead sung the Chilean protest song Venceremos. Soon after, he was killed with a gunshot to the head, and his body was riddled with more than 40 bullets.[20]

According to the BBC.com[21] "There are many conflicting accounts of Jara’s last days but the 2019 Netflix documentary Massacre at the Stadium pieces together a convincing narrative. As a famous musician and prominent supporter of Allende, Jara was swiftly recognised on his way into the stadium. An army officer threw a lit cigarette on the ground, made Jara crawl for it, then stamped on his wrists. Jara was first separated from the other detainees, then beaten and tortured in the bowels of the stadium. At one point, he defiantly sang Venceremos (We Will Win), Allende’s 1970 election anthem, through split lips. On the morning of the 16th, according to a fellow detainee, Jara asked for a pen and notebook and scribbled the lyrics to Estadio Chile, which were later smuggled out of the stadium: “How hard it is to sing when I must sing of horror/ Horror which I am living, horror which I am dying.” Two hours later, he was shot dead, then his body was riddled with machine-gun bullets and dumped in the street. He was 40."

After his murder, Jara's body was displayed at the entrance of Chile Stadium for other prisoners to see. It was later discarded outside the stadium along with the bodies of other civilian prisoners who had been killed by the Chilean Army.[22] His body was found by civil servants and brought to a morgue, where one of them was able to identify him and contact his wife, Joan. She took his body and gave him a quick and clandestine burial in the general cemetery before she fled the country into exile.

That is what it would take, Classic X'er. Fascism is Bolshevik terror and repression in the name of a reactionary or even feudal agenda of economic elites. Jara was one of those people who naively believed in the ideals of Marxism in a country with severe economic problems from which Chilean elites profited greatly, but also gravely dehumanizing to the many poor.  Mussolini, the first Fascist dictator, learned much from Lenin on how to establish state brutality and gave his secret police the name "Ceca", which is the Italian transliteration of the Russian Cheka, Lenin's secret police.   

Yes, I want some things to go back to how they were when Barack Obama was President -- when the President recognized the appropriateness of precedent and protocol, when checks and balances were beyond challenge because consequences for their short-circuiting were far worse than failing to get one's way, when people got respect and dignity in public expressions despite hardships instead of mockery, and when people accepted ethnic and religious diversity as acceptable instead of as something to mock. 

I thoroughly despise the person that Donald Trump is. He is low in emotional intelligence, as is shown in his mockery of people on the autistic spectrum. If you have ever seen Rain Man -- I am not far from being that character. Oh, sure, everyone on the autistic spectrum is different... but I am 'bad' enough that I must practically do stage acting to seem normal. I have embarrassing lapses, so that messes up my human relationships and my work record. 

America has people capable of believing any absurdity that some right-wing official offers -- even medical quackery! -- that Donald Trump has offered on COVID-19. Over a third of a million people have died in America of the Plague of Donald Trump, roughly one-thousandth of the US population. To be sure, this is negligent homicide more than outright murder, which prevents me from calling it genocide.    

...but what I most want is a return to a shared acceptance among Americans as a whole that norms vital to democracy be accepted even if -- indeed, especially if -- those norms be inconvenient. I would like to see conspiracy theories get the recognition for their absurdity; if anything, people who believe in conspiracy theories are the ones most likely to accept a conspiratorial plot that serves their agenda. I'd like to see the political  polarization  between Left and Right, much of which is cultural, disappear.      

You prefer a prick like Obama who doesn't seem to come across as a prick. You do know that Obama was a decent looking, decent sounding two bit politician who was a prick right? Let's see, you're not far from being the "Rain Man" but you still have the right to vote and determine outcomes for other people and still seem to think that half the country is still obligated to go along and remain loyal like it was well over 80 years ago? I think someone should have wised you up to ways of the real world and instilled an understanding that nothing is guaranteed to last forever. You're right, over a third of a million have died as the Democrats have been fucking around and politicizing everything related to it. Well, if I'm right, those dumb fuckers are going to be given power as a means to eliminate a group of dumb fuckers (beltway Republicans) who are clinging to power and getting in the way of American progress. So, what do you think is going to happen when a slim majority imposes its will on the Americans country? Do you think more than a third of a million Democrats are going to die? You haven't shown me that you have balls or the power to stop anything at this point. Partisan people who politically pander for a living/past time don't have the courage or the power to stop anything and that's what the bulk of the Democratic party is today. The Democrats have two years to change or the Democrats are going to be placed on ignore and virtually discarded by America.

[pbrower2a]

(01-01-2021, 12:06 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: You prefer a prick like Obama who doesn't seem to come across as a prick. You do know that Obama was a decent looking, decent sounding two bit politician who was a prick right? Let's see, you're not far from being the "Rain Man" but you still have the right to vote and determine outcomes for other people and still seem to think that half the country is still obligated to go along and remain loyal like it was well over 80 years ago?

My side of the political spectrum, along with some sane conservatives who think that Donald Trump is a disaster, voted in Joe Biden. Donald Trump had nearly four years to make his case that government could be all about him. He needed to convince people who didn't vote for him the last time because he got by in the Electoral College because he won the right votes in 2016. Reliance upon getting enough votes wasn't enough in 2016 simply by running up vote totals in New York, California, and some hyper-partisan D states wasn't enough. Democrats would have to use strategy, or Trump would have to fail catastrophically as a pol. Both happened. 

To call Trump a prick is unfair... to pricks. He is worse, an extreme, pathological narcissist who sees himself as the measure of all things. Take your pick -- someone who knows that he has flaws and must act to seem normal or someone who has the emotional maturity of a sub-teen.  And, yes, votes mean as much whether they come from Warren Buffett or some welfare-receiving "loser". If our system isn't accountable to whole groups because they lack assets, then to what is it accountable? Practically nobody, of course, except people more likely to use the government to oppress others on the behalf of the "practically nobody" sliver of very rich and powerful people. 

Quote:I think someone should have wised you up to ways of the real world and instilled an understanding that nothing is guaranteed to last forever. You're right, over a third of a million have died as the Democrats have been fucking around and politicizing everything related to it.

With comparatively few exceptions, the Democrats have done far better in responding to COVID-19 than Republicans. President Trump has even promoting quack medicine. Negligent homicide, folks. Negligent homicide.

Quote:Well, if I'm right, those dumb fuckers are going to be given power as a means to eliminate a group of dumb fuckers (beltway Republicans) who are clinging to power and getting in the way of American progress.

Progress? Progress and Trump go together about as well as meat within easy reach of a dog's mouth or paws and the voracious dog.  

Quote:So, what do you think is going to happen when a slim majority imposes its will on the Americans country? Do you think more than a third of a million Democrats are going to die? You haven't shown me that you have balls or the power to stop anything at this point. Partisan people who politically pander for a living/past time don't have the courage or the power to stop anything and that's what the bulk of the Democratic party is today. The Democrats have two years to change or the Democrats are going to be placed on ignore and virtually discarded by America.

Democrats must take advantages of whatever opportunities emerge. As Donald Trump shows, the Republicans look as if they are about to give Americans any way of finding any happiness in life other than ways that the Master Class is willing to offer. You know that one: pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die.

[Einzige]

Pbrower talks a lot baout MUH MASTER CLASS etc., but he can't name them - capitalists.

[David Horn]

(12-31-2020, 10:13 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(12-31-2020, 12:40 PM)David Horn Wrote: ...  It was Saint Ronnie who started deficit spending in good times, and cutting taxes to guarantee it would stay that way.  

You're welcome to your opinion, but you don't get your own facts.

You don't get your own facts either. So, who passed the Great Society and signed it into law while he was waging a needless war of attrition in South Vietnam that he had no intentions of winning?

You obviously didn't live in those times. The Great Society was first honest attempt at dragging people out of poverty and guaranteeing their civil rights. Prior to that, things were a hell of a lot worse for anyone not well situated. All those first generation college students from families too poor to attend on their own (which was most of us) created the wealth that's fueled the nation and much of the world ever since.

You're right about Vietnam, though. It was a clusterfuck from day one.

C-Xer Wrote:There's the splitting point dude and the beginning of the national split that occurred before Reagan entered office. What Reagan did was necessary to bring an end to the Soviet Union and the Cold War years.

Horse shit! the Soviet Union was already imploding, and Reagan merely got the opportunity to be there for the funeral. On the other hand, he started all the internal wars in Central America (see Oliver North) that produced the onslaught of refugees and, not surprising at all, MS-13 -- a street gang started by El Salvadorian teens in LA.

C-Xer Wrote:Show me a worthless Democrat in office who hasn't capitalized off the natural split that occurred during the 60's? So, who is going to win the war that's coming with the Left? Keep in mind, the American right won't have its hands legally bound during the war that's coming with today's Left and the Leftists race or gender won't be viewed as a factor that seems cause one to pause these days either.

This sounds a lot like a race war. Don't assume you can win this time. If it happens, it will be the end of the USA as we've know it: no winners!

C-Xer Wrote:So, what's Saint Joe going to do other than nod his head and go along with the rich who prefer to gamble and do business with American tax dollars who bought him his place in what's left of our American history together? So, how much government does a smaller American nation with a large population of self reliant people (low cost/low maintenance/ high yield) who are more or less equals in each others eyes who fully identify with the term American and believe in the American way really need to have these days?

The assumption that Biden will do more of what Republicans have been doing for a century and a half is based on nothing so much as the paranoid phantasies of a lot of RW nut jobs. Don't buy in unless you have evidence that something is happening. On the other hand, the wealthy élite are already hard at work trying to stretch-out their winning streak. If Biden buys-in, I'll be the first to dump him for someone more willing to take them to task. On the other hand, your libertarian phantasy of a wide-open world with everyone treating everyone as equals is unachievable. To work, people have to be ethical, and there will always be enough unethical greed-heads to make that model into a criminal anarchy (watch Gangs of New York for a quick overview of a society built on that premise.

When government is small enough to drown in a bath tub, per Grover Norquist, its place will be taken by afar less friendly power block focused on their own gain, not yours.

[pbrower2a]

(01-01-2021, 02:33 AM)Einzige Wrote: Pbrower talks a lot baout MUH MASTER CLASS etc., but he can't name them - capitalists.

When I speak of Master Classes in America I speak in the plural number.  

Every social system has had some class that begins its dominion by doing something necessary and important, perhaps even bringing genuine material improvement or major restructuring. No ruling elite starts with the intention of being evil, but most Master Classes begin with great promise only to quickly establish a hereditary hierarchy through inheritance or impenetrable ceilings that the common man can never breach. The Master Class uses its monopoly of access to the means of power to the fullest, using those means for enhancing their profit, indulgence, and gain. So it was with shamans; so it has been at times with the military leaders (remember the old saying: every king has a soldier as the progenitor of his dynasty), feudal lords, monopoly capitalists, and bureaucratic elites. 

America has multiple Master Classes:

1. tycoons (there -- the Marxist stereotype of a big, bad capitalist)
2. corporate farmers as they squeeze out small farmers
3. urban landlords who get to squeeze all the disposable income of urban workers that they can get away with squeezing out
4. the Soviet-style nomenklatura that has become the norm in for-profit enterprises and is establishing a similar role in non-profit entities such as universities, churches (especially those of televangelists), state and local governments, hospitals, and research facilities
5. corporate lawyers
6. syndicates of organized crime 

Not only capitalists. Even at that, the smallest-scale capitalists are not in a position in which to exploit people as badly as giant enterprises which may wield monopoly power and dominate a community as a job source. The family who owns a small restaurant might earn $150 K a year on the labor (and at that level the owner is often doing real work so the distinction between proletariat and capitalist blurs. The craftsman who makes and purveys custom furniture is, strictly speaking, a capitalist. As with the restaurateur the line between worker and capitalist isn't so obvious. I live in an area in which many Old Order Amish live, and one thing that I notice about them is that they have no bureaucracy. If one does not go beyond eighth grade or age 16 in education, one is never trained to be a bureaucrat. Graduate with a liberal arts degree. and the last things that one wants to do is heavy physical work or repetitive assembly-line work. Unless one wants a specific career as a teacher, medical professional, attorney, accountant, cop (police work is becoming increasingly attractive to college grads), salesman, librarian, or researcher, most  college grads want to be bureaucrats.    

Thomas Piketty is far more up-to-date than Karl Marx... which is about like saying that the typical geneticist doesn't turn to Charles Darwin for inspiration. If Darwin is in the fossil record for biology, Marx should be so on politics. Marx did not anticipate technological change, the role of psychology (especially Freudian) in explaining much of political and economic life, the increasing proclivity of capitalists (so long at least as Marxism was a menace) to prefer staving off a proletarian revolution by giving the worker more of a stake in the system than in trying to take everything possible (that may be over, especially if Donald Trump is a typical capitalist), and above all the tendency of power to become as oppressive as ownership. Yes, it is easy to see corporate plutocrats as oppressors and exploiters; they simply aren't alone in the sick game. Of the six categories of exploiters in America, the first five are clearly in lockstep in politics. The sixth is murky about its political values, but I wouldn't trust drug kingpins to promote the social optimum -- would you?

[Eric the Green]

(12-31-2020, 09:22 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(12-31-2020, 04:44 PM)Einzige Wrote: The whole scheme of capitalism is laughable.

WE MUST TAX MONEY TO REINFORCE SOCIAL SAFETY NET

Why do there need to be social safety nets?

CAPITALISM

Why do we need capitalism?

MONEY

Hey Brain Dead, where would you be without capitalism? Do you ever think about that? Would you be talking to me here without capitalism? Would  our flag be planted on the moon without capitalism? Would you still  be alive without capitalism?

The Moon landing was a government program. Without it, we would not be able to argue on this forum today.

Oh geez, too bad

[Eric the Green]

(12-31-2020, 12:40 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(12-31-2020, 12:25 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: The government doesn't need as much taxation now that it's fully embraced raising  debt ceilings then  borrowing and spending. It's going to be a pretty big mess when it crashes but whatever, it will be viewed as Democratic problem that most Americans will longer be directly related by then. So, the question is will you still be alive or dead by then? Oh, the other question is, if you're dead, does death grant you a pass or guarantee you a place in suffering for an entire lifetime?

Now, there is cynicism on stilts.  It was Saint Ronnie who started deficit spending in good times, and cutting taxes to guarantee it would stay that way.  

You're welcome to your opinion, but you don't get your own facts.

There is no longer any point to arguing with Classic Xer on this forum. Endless circles. I like spirals!
http://philosopherswheel.com/toccata.htm

[Classic-Xer]

(01-01-2021, 12:53 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(01-01-2021, 12:06 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: You prefer a prick like Obama who doesn't seem to come across as a prick. You do know that Obama was a decent looking, decent sounding two bit politician who was a prick right? Let's see, you're not far from being the "Rain Man" but you still have the right to vote and determine outcomes for other people and still seem to think that half the country is still obligated to go along and remain loyal like it was well over 80 years ago?

My side of the political spectrum, along with some sane conservatives who think that Donald Trump is a disaster, voted in Joe Biden. Donald Trump had nearly four years to make his case that government could be all about him. He needed to convince people who didn't vote for him the last time because he got by in the Electoral College because he won the right votes in 2016. Reliance upon getting enough votes wasn't enough in 2016 simply by running up vote totals in New York, California, and some hyper-partisan D states wasn't enough. Democrats would have to use strategy, or Trump would have to fail catastrophically as a pol. Both happened. 

To call Trump a prick is unfair... to pricks. He is worse, an extreme, pathological narcissist who sees himself as the measure of all things. Take your pick -- someone who knows that he has flaws and must act to seem normal or someone who has the emotional maturity of a sub-teen.  And, yes, votes mean as much whether they come from Warren Buffett or some welfare-receiving "loser". If our system isn't accountable to whole groups because they lack assets, then to what is it accountable? Practically nobody, of course, except people more likely to use the government to oppress others on the behalf of the "practically nobody" sliver of very rich and powerful people. 

Quote:I think someone should have wised you up to ways of the real world and instilled an understanding that nothing is guaranteed to last forever. You're right, over a third of a million have died as the Democrats have been fucking around and politicizing everything related to it.

With comparatively few exceptions, the Democrats have done far better in responding to COVID-19 than Republicans. President Trump has even promoting quack medicine. Negligent homicide, folks. Negligent homicide.

Quote:Well, if I'm right, those dumb fuckers are going to be given power as a means to eliminate a group of dumb fuckers (beltway Republicans) who are clinging to power and getting in the way of American progress.

Progress? Progress and Trump go together about as well as meat within easy reach of a dog's mouth or paws and the voracious dog.  

Quote:So, what do you think is going to happen when a slim majority imposes its will on the Americans country? Do you think more than a third of a million Democrats are going to die? You haven't shown me that you have balls or the power to stop anything at this point. Partisan people who politically pander for a living/past time don't have the courage or the power to stop anything and that's what the bulk of the Democratic party is today. The Democrats have two years to change or the Democrats are going to be placed on ignore and virtually discarded by America.

Democrats must take advantages of whatever opportunities emerge. As Donald Trump shows, the Republicans look as if they are about to give Americans any way of finding any happiness in life other than ways that the Master Class is willing to offer. You know that one: pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die.

Trump represented progress along several stalled fronts that have been impacting middle America for many years. Personally speaking, I could give to shits less about the Democratic fronts and the survival of the Democratic party and its system of preference as a whole. Yes, the Democrats must take advantage of whatever opportunity emerges like it did with the COVID19 crisis and the death of George Floyd because the days of America remaining together and functioning as one country are numbered at this point. You're going to see all kinds of signs of America splitting and moving away from Democratic cities after 4 years of Democrats running rough shot. What happens to them and those DUMB enough to support or cling? Who cares at that point? According to the law, they're old enough which automatically means they're mature enough or wise enough to vote and determine they're own fate these days. I ain't your brother or your daddy and I'm not obligated to continue financially supporting you or serving your interests or the interests of Biden or Obama and I suggest that you find a way to plant that understanding into that head of yours. Obama won't be here to save your ass. Obama will be on the first plane out along with every other two bit piece of shit that your reliant upon today. You do their bidding here and I have no sympathy for you whatsoever. I hear there's a new safe place available for the more deplorable Democratic supporters like you. I suggest that you learn to suck up and go along and don't show any signs of being an individual or signs of being your own man so to speak because the cult doesn't like that quality that we possess today.

[Bob Butler 54]

People might want to visit the Generational Dynamic thread and say you will support him for emergency moderator. He is looking for ten supporters. I personally don't think there are ten people active left.

[Classic-Xer]

(01-01-2021, 02:23 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(12-31-2020, 12:40 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(12-31-2020, 12:25 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: The government doesn't need as much taxation now that it's fully embraced raising  debt ceilings then  borrowing and spending. It's going to be a pretty big mess when it crashes but whatever, it will be viewed as Democratic problem that most Americans will longer be directly related by then. So, the question is will you still be alive or dead by then? Oh, the other question is, if you're dead, does death grant you a pass or guarantee you a place in suffering for an entire lifetime?

Now, there is cynicism on stilts.  It was Saint Ronnie who started deficit spending in good times, and cutting taxes to guarantee it would stay that way.  

You're welcome to your opinion, but you don't get your own facts.

There is no longer any point to arguing with Classic Xer on this forum. Endless circles. I like spirals!
http://philosopherswheel.com/toccata.htm

I prefer spirals instead of circles too. So, if Great Britain couldn't defeat the American radicals of old, what makes you think you'd be able to defeat the American radicals of today? There are millions of us who are waiting for the Democrats to take power and impose their will and then turn their worlds upside down. As I've mentioned, justification is all we need at this point and justification is what your side promised and is going to have to deliver on and more or less give us at this point. We'll see how much value Americans place on a group of worthless racist minorities with college degrees who support violence and lawlessness and warped minded college professors who shouldn't be professors and so called experts or self proclaimed experts who are complete imbeciles/morons and so called intellectuals who openly contradict themselves during their lectures.

[Eric the Green]

(01-01-2021, 06:15 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: People might want to visit the Generational Dynamic thread and say you will support him for emergency moderator.  He is looking for ten supporters.  I personally don't think there are ten people active left.

Trouble is, there is no one left who can make anyone moderator.