The Partisan Divide on Issues

[Eric the Green]

Wyoming has no such Blue Collars who hate "elites". They support Trump Republicans by a 4-1 margin. To support Trump is to support the elite. To support Trump is to support a tyrant and oppose democracy. Wyoming is beyond the pale of any kind of decency or fairness. Wyoming voters just cannot be reached. What we've got here is failure to communicate. So, they need to "get it", and get defeated, and if they rebel to slap them down hard and their guns confiscated.

[pbrower2a]

Trump is what his name suggests: a trick. He is an economic elitist but also an extreme vulgarian. His taste is typical of some schmuck who won the Super-Duper Megabucks Lottery but did nothing to improve himself.  Think of how easy it is to get some enlightenment. Just go to Barnes&Noble and get some books on art, as I did for a lonely time. In my case I got books on Monet, van Gogh, Klimt, and Erte.

A general rule is that one experiences shapes one. I have frequently mocked those people whose desires in life go no further than "sex&drugs&rock-n-roll"... yes, those can be deeply satisfying, but they are also ephemeral. Sex is far better if it involves interaction with a partner beyond the quick orgasm. Maybe a couple might share enough that they get multiple orgasms. OK, there might be a shared shower between those orgasms, but the couple could have a very erotic shower. I hate drugs for their destructive emptiness; if one did nothing to achieve bliss, then one is nothing more than a druggie.

One is what one consumes in culture, and a fortunate education is one full of great books, excursions to see great art (and nature),  and listening to great music. Sure, classical music isn't for everyone, but there is folk; there is jazz; and there are spirituals and rhythm-and-blues.

To be sure, one needs little formal education to be a ranch hand, oil-field roustabout, or heavy-equipment operator. If anything, the greater one's formal education the more one might loathe certain such work. One of the exquisite punishments that one totalitarian regime had of people with mindful jobs who failed to toe the Party line was to assign them to farm labor or highly-repetitive factory work.

The GOP has pulled a dirty trick for about forty years. Although plutocratic in economics it sponsors extreme vulgarity in personal expression. The Republican Party used to be the party of educational elites by the standard of the time -- which in Eisenhower's day meant people who graduated from high school. An apocryphal story holds that Adlai Stevenson heard a story from one of his supporters that every thinking man ought to vote for him. One of the problems, he said, was that not enough people were thinking. Well. Ike wiped the floor with the votes of college graduates to an even stronger extent than Obama did (Ike and Obama were similar in temperament as politicians and as Presidents, so I have an explanation of why an Obama victory map looks more like an Eisenhower victory map than any other electoral map before 2008. The main difference was that Eisenhower won the Mormon and farm-and-ranch vote and Obama didn't  Ike won three traditionally-tough states for Republicans -- Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Rhode Island twice, which  no Republican had done since 1924. Two of those three states were the only ones that Nixon failed to win in 1972 and Reagan failed to win in 1984.  Republicans have won those three states a total of twelve times beginning in 1928, and Ike has half those wins.  

In 1964, Goldwater won the college-educated vote despite the landslide that worked against him. It may be that educated people were less likely to fall for something so scary (appeal to fear) as the "Daisy" ad.

Republicans now trawl the bottom of the barrel in formal education and cultural experience while serving the economic interests of those economic elites who exploit the common man. Perhaps success in an MBA program has no connection to exposure to great literature, art, or music. That's unfortunate, as there is much to be had from those, and those are far more lasting in influence and satisfaction than does conspicuous consumption.

I suggested that one thing that must go if we are to solve global warming is conspicuous consumption that devours huge amounts of energy and natural resources and requires the dispersal of huge amounts of waste heat and vile effluents (pollution). We can make things to last or to be easily repaired. We have a housing crisis and traffic jams  because we have committed so much housing space to houses with quarter-acre lots. We could get away with that in America when we had a population around 150 million; we are now double that.  Technology can work wonders in creating excellent substitutes for things once fiendishly expensive from natural sources, like even diamonds. I predict that we will be able to synthesize fake meat for ourselves and some large carnivores that have much the same tastes as Big Cats. Indeed, we could synthesize something like mouse meat for the other, smaller carnivore. (The kitty-cat will love it!).

OK. Here is one of the wonders of our time. Anyone can get an inexpensive tablet that with Wi-Fi access gives one access to this:

    https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/

If this is not among your computer bookmarks then you are missing something.  With thsi one has no excuse for boredom -- or being a bore. Remember: much of what you are as a person is what you read. All books (mostly public domain) are free.

I am convinced that one of the best approaches to education is the Great Books approach, and with few exceptions (Faulkner, Hemingway, Pasternak, Camus, Orwell, Solzhenitsyn, Kundera,  etc.) most of the Great Books are public domain and thus free. Inexpensive paperback editions. (Too many dead white males? OK, I'll raise you Harper Lee and Anne Frank, and recognize that contemporary Latin America is churning out huge amounts of excellent literature these days). OK, we do need cinema, art, and music...

I am satisfied that just about anyone could get something from reading Dante's Inferno.  Read that, and you don't want to be a mobster, a corrupt politician, a child-molesting clergyman, a Nazi or a Stalinist. Donald Trump could certainly have stood to read it. I can think of many other works, including Nineteen Eighty-Four, that might have changed his life.

[David Horn]

(08-17-2022, 03:01 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Wyoming has no such Blue Collars who hate "elites". They support Trump Republicans by a 4-1 margin. To support Trump is to support the elite. To support Trump is to support a tyrant and oppose democracy. Wyoming is beyond the pale of any kind of decency or fairness. Wyoming voters just cannot be reached. What we've got here is failure to communicate. So, they need to "get it", and get defeated, and if they rebel to slap them down hard and their guns confiscated.

Just who comprises the elites in Wyoming if not the old-line GOP?  Look at the Cheneys as prime examples.  They, along with others of their ilk, are rich and powerful, and more inmportant, owners of "the means of production".  In Wyoming, that's fossil fuels and ranching.

Now,look at the blue collar types.  They are righly angry, but they have decided that the elies aren't properly attentive to the GOP shibboleths of God, guns and gays, along with anyone not native to the state.  Thes are the issues more important to them than assuming actual power in the traditional sense.  Will this degrade into low-level chaos?  Perhaps.

It will not benfit the few Democrats, though ... and they know it.

[pbrower2a]

(08-19-2022, 08:51 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(08-17-2022, 03:01 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Wyoming has no such Blue Collars who hate "elites". They support Trump Republicans by a 4-1 margin. To support Trump is to support the elite. To support Trump is to support a tyrant and oppose democracy. Wyoming is beyond the pale of any kind of decency or fairness. Wyoming voters just cannot be reached. What we've got here is failure to communicate. So, they need to "get it", and get defeated, and if they rebel to slap them down hard and their guns confiscated.

Just who comprises the elites in Wyoming if not the old-line GOP?  Look at the Cheneys as prime examples.  They, along with others of their ilk, are rich and powerful, and more inmportant, owners of "the means of production".  In Wyoming, that's fossil fuels and ranching.

Now, look at the blue collar types.  They are rightly angry, but they have decided that the elites aren't properly attentive to the GOP shibboleths of God, guns and gays, along with anyone not native to the state.  Thes are the issues more important to them than assuming actual power in the traditional sense.  Will this degrade into low-level chaos?  Perhaps.

It will not benefit the few Democrats, though ... and they know it.

The alliance between the raw laborers (oil-field workers, above-ground miners, and ranch hands) and ill-paid service workers (store clerks, food-service people, motel staff, and the like) and the resource-extracting elites is neurotic at best. But that has been the essence of the GOP appeal. It has told people that instead of the classic struggle between the richest economic elites (especially big land owners, mass employers in low-paying businesses,  and the resource-extractors) and the toilers no longer exist. The economic elites provide the opportunity and the workers provide the toil, and the economic elites decide what is available to the masses. The masses who believe this are still resentful, but the GOP diverts their anger to people of different culture (whether ethnicity or religion, let alone sexuality) and toward "intellectuals" who ridicule mass superstition, a mindless mass culture, and  manipulative media such as FoX Propaganda Channel. The most rapacious pigs in Wyoming point to the "intellectual elite"  as the English teacher who corrects bad grammar in a kid, a science teacher who ridicules such garbage as young-earth creationism. Wyoming seems like the sort of place in which the stupider one is, the happier one generally can be. That is so in much of GOP country.  Note well: schoolteachers may not qualify as intellectuals (the Education school in most universities is mostly the academic low end)  

One of the differences between the R world and the D world is that the R world, however los in income, still has more people living in single-family dwellings. This is not so much a state-to-state issue as an urban-rural divide. This divide exists just as much in strongly-D Illinois in statewide (if not local politics outside Chicagoland) and into until-recently strong-R Texas. People are more likely to be tenants in Chicago or Houston. Go fifty miles away and people are likely to have a single-family house even if it is a dreary shack. If one owns a dreary shack one at least does not have a landlord as an exploiter and has less cause to hate the GOP, one of whose biggest suppliers of funds is urban landlords.  Even if one has a highly-fulfilling and responsible job in a great metropolitan area, one usually has a landlord to exploit one. If one has a highly-fulfilling and responsible job these days one almost certainly has a good college education, and one can recognize that one is getting $crewed badly. 

The GOP is, to put it bluntly, largely the Party of the Stupid, and by now it takes a certain level of stupidity more than it takes belief in free markets and class privilege to be a Republican -- which now almost always means a Trump supporter.  More important now is to uplift mindlessness than to adhere to old standards of legality.  If one can tolerate mass stupidity in the name of maximizing profit or executive competition one can still be GOP. 

Donald Trump is an authoritarian who holds the normal decencies of democracy in contempt. Nobody can now question this. He has taken the GOP, which has had tendencies in this direction beginning with Ronald Reagan, into the neurotic Realm of the Absurd to the extent that legal scrutiny of his misdeeds are traitors to some "Real America". Others, like Gingrich, Atwater, Rove, Palin, and DeLay made their contributions in the political sphere. Religious hucksters such as Falwell, Hagee, Swaggart, and the wealth-cult televangelists have played their roles.     

Marx' class struggle between powerful exploiters and has been a big part of life since the start of the industrial era. Maybe it isn't only between owners of the manufacturing plants and giant (Junker-like) estates and oppressed workers; others, like those who have soft jobs in commercial and State bureaucracies can exploit too. Just look at the executive elite of the USA, the old Soviet nomenklatura, and the successors of the Soviet nomenklatura in Putin-era kleptocracy and crony capitalism.

It is far easier to overpower and exploit people if they are stupid. That is how all totalitarian regimes operate -- in part, ensure that education is reduced to narrow training that neglects the quality of life. If you hear the words "bar talk" out of context in the English-speaking world and think of a Hungarian composer and not "What's your sign, baby?", then you likely ill fit Trump's world.

[Eric the Green]

(08-19-2022, 08:51 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(08-17-2022, 03:01 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Wyoming has no such Blue Collars who hate "elites". They support Trump Republicans by a 4-1 margin. To support Trump is to support the elite. To support Trump is to support a tyrant and oppose democracy. Wyoming is beyond the pale of any kind of decency or fairness. Wyoming voters just cannot be reached. What we've got here is failure to communicate. So, they need to "get it", and get defeated, and if they rebel to slap them down hard and their guns confiscated.

Just who comprises the elites in Wyoming if not the old-line GOP?  Look at the Cheneys as prime examples.  They, along with others of their ilk, are rich and powerful, and more important, owners of "the means of production".  In Wyoming, that's fossil fuels and ranching.

Now, look at the blue collar types.  They are righly angry, but they have decided that the elites aren't properly attentive to the GOP shibboleths of God, guns and gays, along with anyone not native to the state.  Thes are the issues more important to them than assuming actual power in the traditional sense.  Will this degrade into low-level chaos?  Perhaps.

It will not benfit the few Democrats, though ... and they know it.

Right. There is really not much difference between the various authoritarian folks, including blue collared ones, who defer to the rich bosses (including the rich bosses themselves like the Cheneys and Barrassos), and those who defer to the priestly authorities and the other groups upheld by social conservatism. They are usually allies, if not the same people. The neoliberal ideology of deferring to the job creaters and opposing welfare and government social programs matches naturally with those who think certain ethnic and religious groups should have privileges and preferences for nearby residence in their nation, etc. and should not be supported by this "government that is the problem" that "asks me to pay taxes from my hard-earned income to support those who don't deserve it and don't work" etc. Just ask Classic Xer, ha ha!

The Cheneys are not apparently much different than their underlings in their overall views, but somehow the Cheneys seem to have an appreciation for the rule of law and basic principles of democracy, or at least Liz does, and gets agreement from his father on this occasion at least. I don't know if there is any class distinction that accounts for this, or if the rich elites somehow can see past Trump, while the blue collared folks who work for them cannot. Probably there's no difference between classes in general on this point.

The difference between former president Trump and his Veep on this issue seems another instance. Why do a few Republicans get it, and most don't? And I think there is a tendency among some to really think that Trump represents them against the elites. They are simply deceived, and there's just not much more to it than that, as far as I can tell. And their supposed anti-elitism really translates into support for policies that uphold the elites and their destruction even of the common people themselves, and that is another indication of their extreme level of ignorance and foolishness. I encounter it often online.

[David Horn]

(08-19-2022, 01:45 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: ... Why do a few Republicans get it, and most don't? And I think there is a tendency among some to really think that Trump represents them against the elites. They are simply deceived, and there's just not much more to it than that, as far as I can tell. And their supposed anti-elitism really translates into support for policies that uphold the elites and their destruction even of the common people themselves, and that is another indication of their extreme level of ignorance and foolishness. I encounter it often online.

We all see through our own lens, and the GOP lens centers on class validation: some are just more worthy than others, and stuborn continuity.  In a way this is the issue that is facturing the party and may, in the long run, finally overcome the negatives.  The problem: what consitutes the long run?

We T4Ters have a unique lens, based on the idea that history operates over saecula consisting of turnings.  What we lack is any ability to see into the future with a high degree of precision -- so we speculate.  The GOP just assumes that their continuiy model is a fact, not a theory (and a weak one at that).  The real problem is pace and timing.  When and how quickly can this be resolved are now the burning quesons.  Soon we all hope.

[Eric the Green]

(08-20-2022, 08:06 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(08-19-2022, 01:45 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: ... Why do a few Republicans get it, and most don't? And I think there is a tendency among some to really think that Trump represents them against the elites. They are simply deceived, and there's just not much more to it than that, as far as I can tell. And their supposed anti-elitism really translates into support for policies that uphold the elites and their destruction even of the common people themselves, and that is another indication of their extreme level of ignorance and foolishness. I encounter it often online.

We all see through our own lens, and the GOP lens centers on class validation: some are just more worthy than others, and stubborn continuity.  In a way this is the issue that is facturing the party and may, in the long run, finally overcome the negatives.  The problem: what consitutes the long run?

We T4Ters have a unique lens, based on the idea that history operates over saecula consisting of turnings.  What we lack is any ability to see into the future with a high degree of precision -- so we speculate.  The GOP just assumes that their continuiy model is a fact, not a theory (and a weak one at that).  The real problem is pace and timing.  When and how quickly can this be resolved are now the burning questions.  Soon we all hope.

It may be that by nominating so many election deniers to key offices, federal as well as state, that they may be making things easier for Democrats to keep and improve their majority during this crucial decade. Let's hope they keep doing us that favor, and that the people respond appropriately to it and vote to retain democracy as well as a livable climate and economy.

The polls are wide in some cases, such as PA senate and governor and AZ senate. In some cases like AZ governor the polls are uncomfortably close.

[David Horn]

(08-21-2022, 01:41 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(08-20-2022, 08:06 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(08-19-2022, 01:45 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: ... Why do a few Republicans get it, and most don't? And I think there is a tendency among some to really think that Trump represents them against the elites. They are simply deceived, and there's just not much more to it than that, as far as I can tell. And their supposed anti-elitism really translates into support for policies that uphold the elites and their destruction even of the common people themselves, and that is another indication of their extreme level of ignorance and foolishness. I encounter it often online.

We all see through our own lens, and the GOP lens centers on class validation: some are just more worthy than others, and stubborn continuity.  In a way this is the issue that is facturing the party and may, in the long run, finally overcome the negatives.  The problem: what consitutes the long run?

We T4Ters have a unique lens, based on the idea that history operates over saecula consisting of turnings.  What we lack is any ability to see into the future with a high degree of precision -- so we speculate.  The GOP just assumes that their continuiy model is a fact, not a theory (and a weak one at that).  The real problem is pace and timing.  When and how quickly can this be resolved are now the burning questions.  Soon we all hope.

It may be that by nominating so many election deniers to key offices, federal as well as state, that they may be making things easier for Democrats to keep and improve their majority during this crucial decade. Let's hope they keep doing us that favor, and that the people respond appropriately to it and vote to retain democracy as well as a livable climate and economy.

The polls are wide in some cases, such as PA senate and governor and AZ senate. In some cases like AZ governor the polls are uncomfortably close.

Unfortunately, there are still stresses that can tear that apart.  In more Progressive areas (thoug toss-ups in the fall), primary challenges may do to the Democrats what the Trumpist far-right challengers are dong to the GOP: nominate unelectable candiates in the general.  It can play both ways.  The next few weeks should tell the tale.  

Challenging Sean Patrick Maloney in his reconfigure district seems near suicidal.  He may not be the most Progressive canidiate running, but he wins and helps others win too.  And he's pretty decent overall.  He's only one example.  With the count so close, outright failure is both possible and likely to be devastating if it occurs.

[pbrower2a]

(08-20-2022, 08:06 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(08-19-2022, 01:45 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: ... Why do a few Republicans get it, and most don't? And I think there is a tendency among some to really think that Trump represents them against the elites. They are simply deceived, and there's just not much more to it than that, as far as I can tell. And their supposed anti-elitism really translates into support for policies that uphold the elites and their destruction even of the common people themselves, and that is another indication of their extreme level of ignorance and foolishness. I encounter it often online.

We all see through our own lens, and the GOP lens centers on class validation: some are just more worthy than others, and stubborn continuity.  In a way this is the issue that is fracturing the party and may, in the long run, finally overcome the negatives.  The problem: what consitutes the long run?

We T4Ters have a unique lens, based on the idea that history operates over saecula consisting of turnings.  What we lack is any ability to see into the future with a high degree of precision -- so we speculate.  The GOP just assumes that their continuity model is a fact, not a theory (and a weak one at that).  The real problem is pace and timing.  When and how quickly can this be resolved are now the burning questions.  Soon we all hope.

Men make history and history shapes their children through economic and political consequences. Then their children make history in accordance with their psychological make-up, their environment, the educational system, and the culture. They may rebel against strictures that make no sense to them or offend moral sensibilities, but Howe-Strauss theory explains how, when, and why such happens. What people tolerated in the name of social peace despite its amorality is most likely to incite rebellion. Jim Crow practice was the most brittle of targets in America, and it imploded more precipitously than anything else.  

Were Trumpism to be entrenched in a 1T, then we would have the stormiest Awakening Era ever around 2040 or so. It is too morally empty, too mindless, too exploitative, too personally repressive, and too culturally insipid to  avoid collapse once cultural and political challenges are possible after a 1T is over. I can't say that Trumpism or something like it won't be entrenched, but the likeliness of such has dropped from nearly even to a long-shot. 

Time is environment just as much as geography, ethnicity, sect and social class.   Time dictates whether social class is disparities between lavish excess and lethal poverty or between "high culture" and "low culture" (let us say a sailboat or a motorcycle, as the two are similarly expensive the two are similarly expensive, or  spending free time in art galleries or pumping coins into slot machines. It is far better that the class divide be the latter than that we have starvation in plain sight (or at all). 

The 1T will redefine many of the buzzwords of political discourse. Figure that whoever prevails in this 4T and defines the Zeitgeist of the forthcoming 1T may even redefine what conservatism is. Consider:

1. respect for tradition as a fallback against the avant-garde when the latter fails
2. continuity of the value of old wisdom because human nature changes less over the centuries than one might expect. 
3. honoring precedent and protocol as alternatives to destructive chaos
4. support of rational thought (aside from aesthetics, as we cannot live on pure reason)
5. insistence upon the rule of law and of law and order.
6. recognition of the inherent hierarchy of competence and the need to support it over demagogic leveling or class privilege
7. promotion of old, well-entrenched decencies that underpin civility and prosperity
8. understanding the necessity of family, community, and nation
9. attempting to harmonize necessary change with extant reality instead of starting anew in a revolution

Does this sound like conservatism to you? That describes Barack Obama well, even if he did not fit certain parts of the idea of conservatism that one associates with the Reagan-to-Trump GOP that puts emphases upon bigotry, superstition, pseudoscience, economic hierarchy whose basis is class privilege requiring great suffering below. When Barack Obama is the model of how to be President and much else in political life, then this will define conservatism circa 2030. Obama is the Mature Reactive, the typical style-setter for political life in a 1T. (If you want to know what an "immature reactive is", then look at most Axis leaders and Stalinist stooges. Yuck!) Obama may have been liberal on economic relationships and social values, including LGBT rights and feminism, but Obama showed his adeptness at harmonizing needful change with existing reality. 

I look at the list above and I see Obama as the conservative and Trump as the dangerous radical. Trump is a reactionary in believing that he who has the gold makes the rules, which satisfies few people outside of those who own the gold. Look at the above list and see how Trump fails to match it. 

1. He can't recognize his own failure, and he faults anyone for seeing him as a failure at anything.
2. He has no idea of what the old wisdom is. 
3. He scrapped stare decisis, a principle without which legal process becomes anarchy.
4. He seems terribly irrational. 
5. The Bolshevik-style coup on January 6, 2021.
6. He is hostile to formal learning. 
7. Very bad manners such as mocking the handicapped and military vets who have faced some hardships in service to their country.
8. His family life resembles something more like that of the Borgia or the Gotti families. 
9. See 5 again.

[Eric the Green]

(08-21-2022, 12:20 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(08-21-2022, 01:41 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(08-20-2022, 08:06 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(08-19-2022, 01:45 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: ... Why do a few Republicans get it, and most don't? And I think there is a tendency among some to really think that Trump represents them against the elites. They are simply deceived, and there's just not much more to it than that, as far as I can tell. And their supposed anti-elitism really translates into support for policies that uphold the elites and their destruction even of the common people themselves, and that is another indication of their extreme level of ignorance and foolishness. I encounter it often online.

We all see through our own lens, and the GOP lens centers on class validation: some are just more worthy than others, and stubborn continuity.  In a way this is the issue that is facturing the party and may, in the long run, finally overcome the negatives.  The problem: what consitutes the long run?

We T4Ters have a unique lens, based on the idea that history operates over saecula consisting of turnings.  What we lack is any ability to see into the future with a high degree of precision -- so we speculate.  The GOP just assumes that their continuiy model is a fact, not a theory (and a weak one at that).  The real problem is pace and timing.  When and how quickly can this be resolved are now the burning questions.  Soon we all hope.

It may be that by nominating so many election deniers to key offices, federal as well as state, that they may be making things easier for Democrats to keep and improve their majority during this crucial decade. Let's hope they keep doing us that favor, and that the people respond appropriately to it and vote to retain democracy as well as a livable climate and economy.

The polls are wide in some cases, such as PA senate and governor and AZ senate. In some cases like AZ governor the polls are uncomfortably close.

Unfortunately, there are still stresses that can tear that apart.  In more Progressive areas (though toss-ups in the fall), primary challenges may do to the Democrats what the Trumpist far-right challengers are doing to the GOP: nominate unelectable candiates in the general.  It can play both ways.  The next few weeks should tell the tale.  

Challenging Sean Patrick Maloney in his reconfigured district seems near suicidal.  He may not be the most Progressive candidiate running, but he wins and helps others win too.  And he's pretty decent overall.  He's only one example.  With the count so close, outright failure is both possible and likely to be devastating if it occurs.

My impression of you has been that you support such challenges from the left (except if they are SJW culture warriors, I suppose). But I agree with your above. I don't know if such suicidal primary actions are happening; primaries are about over by now anyway. The right-wing may be giving us a present. But that depends if the people realize this and vote accordingly.

I thought Sean Patrick Maloney spoke very well today on Meet the Press. It took him a while to sort of dodge Chuck's question about Democrats' support for a MAGA primary candidate in Michigan; not a good idea even if understandable strategy. We should never underestimate the appeal of fascism.

[David Horn]

(08-22-2022, 03:52 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(08-21-2022, 12:20 PM)David Horn Wrote: ...  In more Progressive areas (though toss-ups in the fall), primary challenges may do to the Democrats what the Trumpist far-right challengers are doing to the GOP: nominate unelectable candiates in the general.  It can play both ways.  The next few weeks should tell the tale.  

Challenging Sean Patrick Maloney in his reconfigured district seems near suicidal.  He may not be the most Progressive candidiate running, but he wins and helps others win too.  And he's pretty decent overall.  He's only one example.  With the count so close, outright failure is both possible and likely to be devastating if it occurs.

My impression of you has been that you support such challenges from the left (except if they are SJW culture warriors, I suppose). But I agree with your above. I don't know if such suicidal primary actions are happening; primaries are about over by now anyway. The right-wing may be giving us a present. But that depends if the people realize this and vote accordingly.

I thought Sean Patrick Maloney spoke very well today on Meet the Press. It took him a while to sort of dodge Chuck's question about Democrats' support for a MAGA primary candidate in Michigan; not a good idea even if understandable strategy. We should never underestimate the appeal of fascism.

You made a good point about my take on Progressive challenges, so I'll address that. I have no problem adding Progressive voices to Congress, both in the House and the Senate. I welcome it. I do have a serious issue playing with fire, when the district is not all that friendly to the Progressive agenda. It's better to elect a decent Dem than any Republican in almost every case (perhaps not Kristin Sinema or Joe Mancin, but those are discussions for another day).

On supporting MAGA challengers to more centrist Republicans, Maloney is doing unto them what the Tea Party and Ultra-MAGA types have done to themselves: elect Dems in the fall. It may be risky in some races but the odds of keeping the House are on the table. You can't fault the political guy for playing the odds.

[Eric the Green]

(08-22-2022, 09:58 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(08-22-2022, 03:52 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(08-21-2022, 12:20 PM)David Horn Wrote: ...  In more Progressive areas (though toss-ups in the fall), primary challenges may do to the Democrats what the Trumpist far-right challengers are doing to the GOP: nominate unelectable candiates in the general.  It can play both ways.  The next few weeks should tell the tale.  

Challenging Sean Patrick Maloney in his reconfigured district seems near suicidal.  He may not be the most Progressive candidiate running, but he wins and helps others win too.  And he's pretty decent overall.  He's only one example.  With the count so close, outright failure is both possible and likely to be devastating if it occurs.

My impression of you has been that you support such challenges from the left (except if they are SJW culture warriors, I suppose). But I agree with your above. I don't know if such suicidal primary actions are happening; primaries are about over by now anyway. The right-wing may be giving us a present. But that depends if the people realize this and vote accordingly.

I thought Sean Patrick Maloney spoke very well today on Meet the Press. It took him a while to sort of dodge Chuck's question about Democrats' support for a MAGA primary candidate in Michigan; not a good idea even if understandable strategy. We should never underestimate the appeal of fascism.

You made a good point about my take on Progressive challenges, so I'll address that.  I have no problem adding Progressive voices to Congress, both in the House and the Senate.  I welcome it.  I do have a serious issue playing with fire, when the district is not all that friendly to the Progressive agenda.  It's better to elect a decent Dem than any Republican in almost every case (perhaps not Kristin Sinema or Joe Mancin, but those are discussions for another day).  

On supporting MAGA challengers to more centrist Republicans, Maloney is doing unto them what the Tea Party and Ultra-MAGA types have done to themselves: elect Dems in the fall.  It may be risky in some races but the odds of keeping the House are on the table.  You can't fault the political guy for playing the odds.

I guess I agree with Chuck on that. That strategy adds to the discredit Democrats have been getting from too many. And it's too risky. MAGA extremists should always be opposed. Let the Repugs discredit themselves.

[David Horn]

(08-22-2022, 10:53 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(08-22-2022, 09:58 AM)David Horn Wrote: On supporting MAGA challengers to more centrist Republicans, Maloney is doing unto them what the Tea Party and Ultra-MAGA types have done to themselves: elect Dems in the fall.  It may be risky in some races but the odds of keeping the House are on the table.  You can't fault the political guy for playing the odds.

I guess I agree with Chuck on that. That strategy adds to the discredit Democrats have been getting from too many. And it's too risky. MAGA extremists should always be opposed. Let the Repugs discredit themselves.

That's an honest position for sure.  My only concern: the Marquis of Queensboro rules are not viable when one side uses any means to win all the time.  This may be more of a turning point election than even we T4Ters believe.  If so, then the results AND THE METHODS will be dissected ad nauseum by all sides, and "dishonest tinkering" may be important to more than just the losers.  But in the end, losing gracefully is not an option -- not this time. It's sad that has to be so.

[pbrower2a]

The one "classic" conservative position that I missed is an overall pessimism in human nature. That should reasonably be dropped for a practical reason: that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Pessimists ordinarily get their doubts about Humanity fulfilled.

[Eric the Green]

Sean Patrick Maloney won, even though PBS isn't even covering the race. Nor 538.org

https://www.axios.com/2022/08/24/new-yor...ck-maloney

"Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) on Tuesday beat back a fierce primary challenge from progressive state Sen. Alessandra Biaggi by a roughly two-to-one margin in New York's 17th District, according to the AP.

Why it matters: Maloney's win heads off a potential PR nightmare for House Democrats: the chair of their campaign arm losing his re-election in a year in which they're already widely seen as being on the back foot.

It also halts a trend of young progressive insurgents unseating powerful New York Democrats in recent cycles.
The backdrop: Maloney, the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, angered many in his own party by opting to run in a district largely represented by Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.) after a chaotic redistricting process.

After Jones retreated to a district in New York City, Biaggi — who had initially been running in a district that stretched to Long Island — launched a bid against Maloney.
She came in with endorsements from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and powerful progressive groups, as well as a history of unseating incumbents.
But Maloney had a significant cash advantage and the backing of far more local leaders, as well as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former President Clinton, a resident of the district.
What's next: While Maloney now turns his attention to helping colleagues win their elections in November, he's not out of the woods yet on his own reelection.

Republicans have a top recruit in state Assemblyman Mike Lawler, who is on the National Republican Campaign Committee's "On The Radar" list.
The district voted for President Biden by 10 points in 2020, giving Maloney an edge – but Republicans have targeted even more Democratic-leaning districts this cycle.
What they're saying: “Voters in the Hudson Valley have spoken: they want leaders who will put partisanship aside to get real results," Maloney said in a statement.

Maloney thanked Biaggi for "running a good race," adding that the primary "made us stronger."
He added: "Now is the time to come together and ensure the Hudson Valley resoundly rejects the radical, anti-choice, pro-gun policies of MAGA Republican Mike Lawler.”
The other side: Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), the chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said his Democratic counterpart "failed the Hudson Valley with his incompetence, self-serving politics, and far-left extremism."

"Maloney will be out of a job this November when voters reject his progressive agenda that’s brought about historic inflation and a violent crime wave," he said."


Another Maloney, apparently no relation to Sean, but was married to a now deceased man named Maloney, was defeated by the more progressive Jerry Nadler, who had voted the right way on Iraq and other issues in the past.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/20...on-results

"NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. Rep. Jerry Nadler, who twice led fights to impeach former President Donald Trump, has defeated U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney in a Democratic primary after a court forced the two veteran lawmakers into the same New York City congressional district.

Nadler’s victory ends a 30-year run in Congress for Maloney, who battled to get government aid for people sickened by clouds of toxic soot after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The unusual race between incumbents who are typically allies was the result of a redistricting process that lumped Nadler’s home base on the west side of Manhattan together with Maloney’s on the east side.

Neither was willing to run in another part of the city.

Nadler also defeated Suraj Patel, a 38-year-old lawyer and lecturer at New York University who has now failed to advance out of a Democratic congressional primary in three straight tries.

Nadler, 75, was first elected to Congress in 1992. As chair of the House Judiciary Committee, he led both impeachments of Republican former President Donald Trump. He was buoyed in the last weeks of the campaign by endorsements from The New York Times and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

Maloney, 76, also first elected in 1992, is the first woman to chair the House Oversight and Reform Committee. She is known for her longtime advocacy for Sept. 11 first responders seeking compensation for diseases they attribute to contamination from the destruction of the World Trade Center. She wore a firefighter’s jacket on Capitol Hill and at the 2019 Met Gala.

Few policy differences between Nadler, Maloney and Patel emerged during the primary campaign.

All support abortion rights, the Green New Deal and tighter restrictions on gun ownership. Patel argued that Nadler’s and Maloney’s generation failed to achieve Democratic goals like codifying Roe v. Wade and should cede to new blood.

Nadler and Maloney countered that their seniority in Congress brings clout that benefits New Yorkers.

WATCH: Amy Walter and Annie Linskey on Trump’s legal troubles, New York and Florida primaries

Friends for many years, the two Democrats lamented having to run against each other — something that only happened after a court redrew the boundaries of the state’s congressional districts after concluding the legislature botched the process.

“I didn’t want to run against my good friend, Jerry Nadler,” Maloney said at a recent debate. “We have been friends and allies for years. Unfortunately, we were drawn into the same district.”

Still, on the campaign trail Maloney said that as a woman, she would fight harder to protect abortion rights than Nadler.

Asked at a debate how his record differed from that of Maloney, Nadler cited his votes against the Iraq War and the Patriot Act, and in favor of the Iran nuclear deal. Maloney, also elected to Congress in 1992, voted the other way on all three.

Maloney also came under fire from her opponents for her past positions on vaccines, including in 2006 when she introduced legislation directing the federal government to study the debunked theory that vaccines can cause autism. Maloney insisted that she supports vaccines and regretted having ever questioned vaccine safety."


Another key race:
https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nys/hudson...l-election
Pat Ryan wins NY-19 special election, keeping seat in Democratic hands

One less Democratic Rep because of the loss in reapportionment, it appears, assuming Sean Patrick Maloney wins in November.

[Eric the Green]

This Vox article reveals how far the USA has sunk back into the days of the Civil War 160 years ago. Race is still the thing that divides us. Of course there are several other issues on which we are severely divided, such as environment/climate change, neoliberal Reaganomics, guns, covid masks and vaccines, and so on, but they have all been sorted into the same racial red/blue divide.

It really amazes me that Classic Xer can come on here and actually claim that he is not a racist. His whole point of view is shaped by his membership in this divide and his participation in it as a militant member of the Republican side of this divide.

The midterm elections revealed that America is in a cold civil war

This is a country fundamentally split in two, with no real room for compromise.

By Zack Beauchamp@zackbeauchampzack@vox.com  Nov 7, 2018, 1:45pm EST
https://www.vox.com/midterm-elections/20...ce-surburb




The 2018 midterm elections were a significant victory for the Democratic Party. Retaking the House blocks the Republicans from passing new laws and gives Democrats the ability to conduct real investigations into President Donald Trump’s multifarious scandals.

But while the immediate post-election battle may be in the House of Representatives, the midterms also revealed that the war for the soul of America is only just getting started.

The preliminary results reveal the divides that determined the 2016 election are intensifying and strengthening. Republicans did well with rural voters, white Southerner voters, and low-educated voters — while Democrats won among city-dwellers, minorities, and highly educated white suburbanites. The strength of these divides led to some consequential results, like Republicans’ sweeping victory in the Missouri Senate elections or the Democratic “biggest upset of the night” in an Oklahoma House race.

The results make clear that American politics is polarized not on the basis of class or even ideology, but on identity. The United States is currently split into two camps: One side open to mass immigration and changes to the country’s traditional racial hierarchy, the other is deeply hostile to it. Trump and congressional Republicans did their best to exploit these divides — remember the caravan? — and the best political science we have suggests that such divides exist between Americans who live in different places and socialize with different people.

This is a longstanding divide in America, one that accelerated under President Barack Obama. But President Donald Trumps’s 2016 campaign, the most racially divisive in modern history, escalated this into a kind of cold civil war. Trump’s victory was a kind of political Fort Sumter, a sign that a smaller and more racially conservative part of the country would not accept social change without a fight.

The midterm elections have revealed that this fight is here to stay, for at least as long as Trump is in the White House. (my note: OR LONGER!) We are locked in a kind of cold civil war.

The 2018 election: a country divided by education, race, and region

It’s always hard to come up with good data the day after an election. Thankfully, we have the Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES) — a sophisticated poll of more than 50,000 Americans conducted just before the election.

Brian Schaffner, a professor at Tufts who helps run the CCES project, started tweeting out some of the results on Tuesday night. Here’s one of his most striking charts, which broke down the white electorate in the House by gender, region, and education:



Three clear patterns emerge from this data. First, Democrats did better with white women than white men. Second, Democrats did significantly better with college-educated whites than non-college-educated whites. Third, the South is different: Republicans did far better with whites of all different sorts of backgrounds there than they did anywhere else in the country.

When you pile these patterns in the white vote on top of the now-familiar racial divides — CNN’s exit poll shows Democrats winning 90 percent of black voters, 69 percent of Latino voters, and 77 percent of Asian voters — you get a clear sense of what lead to last night’s results: Democrats winning big with minorities and educated whites.

But this isn’t just a race and educational divide — it’s also a regional one. Another Schaffner chart, on the suburbs, helped clarify how stark the regional differences are. The suburbs, home to many educated whites, are historically Republican bastions. But in 2018, suburban voters broke for Democrats — with the South, once again, the sole exception:



Democratic inroads in the suburbs were offset by huge Republican gains in rural areas. In 2012, Missouri Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill won rural Saline County by 22.5 points. In 2018, she lost it by 21.4 points — and lost her reelection bid due to similar rural swings around the state.

These results were mirrored around the country. In the Florida statewide races, Democrats overperformed their traditional margins in urban and suburban areas home to many educated whites and Latinos. But Republicans won enormous victories in Florida’s less educated, more culturally Southern rural areas, resulting in GOP victories in both races.

In Virginia’s 10th Congressional District, an increasingly suburban congressional district Democrats hadn’t won since 1981, challenger Jennifer Wexton beat incumbent Rep. Barbara Comstock by a hefty 56-44 margin. In Oklahoma-5, which Republican Rep. Steve Russell won by more than 20 points in 2016, Democrat Kendra Horn eked out a surprise victory on the strength of her support in Oklahoma City.

What this suggests is the old “red state, blue state” model is outdated. America’s divides do not fall neatly along state lines, but rather within states and between locales and regions. City-dwellers, non-Southern educated whites, and minorities vote for Democrats in increasingly large numbers — while rural and less-educated whites around the country make up the new Republican base.

Why the 2018 midterms ended the way they did: race and identity

How do we make sense of these divides? To answer that question, I asked George Washington University political scientist John Sides, the author (along with UCLA’s Lynn Vavreck and UC Irvine’s Michael Tesler), of Identity Crisis — the best book, for my money, on the 2016 presidential election. Sides sees the demographic splits as representing, fundamentally, an extension of the battle over identity issues that defined the 2016 election.

“The factors that divided the electorate in 2016 are dividing them even further now,” Sides tells me. “One example is the education divide within whites, which appears as large if not larger among women ... another example is the rural-urban divide. All of those demographic characteristics are correlated with views of race and immigration.”

To understand why Sides sees last night as reflecting a divide on these issues, we need to go back in time to the beginning of the Obama presidency.

American politics before Obama was already quite racialized. The civil rights movement had a tectonic effect on the American political landscape, sorting black voters into the Democratic Party and pushing racially conservative white Southerners to defect to the GOP. Mass Hispanic immigration had a similar effect: Democrats friendliness to continued immigration, and growing GOP skepticism of the same, further polarized the electorate on racial lines.

Obama’s victory, the visible symbol of a changing America that no voter could ignore, took all of these latent divides and turbocharged them. The result, Sides et al. argue in Identity Crisis, was a collapse in Democratic support among white voters without college educations.

“Whites who did not attend college were evenly split between the two parties in Pew surveys conducted from 1992 to 2008,” they write. “But by 2015, white voters who had a high school degree or less were 24 percentage points more Republican than Democratic (57%-33%).”

This isn’t a class divide in the traditional sense; there are plenty of relatively high-income whites without college degrees (think of a successful, self-employed plumber). Rather, the “diploma gap” tracked measures of racism and racial resentment more than anything else. Democrats lost huge amounts of ground among non-college whites with conservative racial attitudes, while staying the same or even improving among those with more progressive views:



There’s similar evidence on the effect of immigration in recent years. In their book White Backlash, political scientists Marisa Abrajano and Zoltan Hajnal find that mass immigration and media attention to the alleged threats from it (like unauthorized immigrants committing crimes) has led to rising white sorting into the GOP.

“When media coverage of immigration uses the Latino threat narrative, the likelihood of whites identifying with the Democratic Party decreases and the probability of favoring Republicans increase,” Abrajano and Hajnal write. ”As immigration’s impact on the United States has grown, whites have fled to the Republican Party in ever-larger numbers.”

Donald Trump won the presidency by appealing, nakedly, to these divisions. His rhetoric on Mexican immigration, Muslims, and African Americans appealed to the kind of low-educated, rural white voters who had fled the Democratic party. While it turned off more educated voters who tend to have more racially progressive views, the effect wasn’t large enough for 2016 Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton in a few key areas.

The 2018 midterms represent an extension of this battle. Democrats campaigned on bread-and-butter issues like health care, while Trump’s outsized media presence and insistence on his issues — like the so-called migrant caravan — practically ensured that the debate would be a referendum on Trump’s brand of politics. The Trump strategy was to continue polarizing the electorate along identity lines, and to hope for a repeat of 2016.

This worked, to a degree. Republicans who ran Trump-like campaigns on identity issues, like Ron DeSantis in the Florida governor’s race, were rewarded by the rural and non-college white electorate. It also helped defend some Republican House seats in the South, where statistical studies suggest racial identity issues are particularly important for white voters.

But this time, the Democratic dominance among minority voters and gains among more educated whites more than offset the losses. Democrats even managed to claw back some of Trump’s gains in Midwestern states, like Wisconsin and Michigan, that were billed as the archetypal places for blue-collar Trumpism to succeed. The president’s identity politics helped him consolidate his base, but it also cost him a fair number of voters — enough to lose the House of Representatives.

“We’re seeing the emotionally charged politics of race and immigration emerge in lots of states and districts — even without Trump on the ballot,” Sides tells me.

A cold Civil War

The best way to think about this identity divide is a political conflict between two camps with fundamentally different visions for what the country is, with little room for compromise. It’s a kind of cold civil war, fought not with bullets but bitter and zero-sum political contests.

Increasingly, Republicans and Democrats see themselves as part of cultural groups that are fundamentally distinct: They consume different media and attend different churches; live in distinct kinds of places and rarely interact with people who disagree with them.

Being a “Republican” or a “Democrat” isn’t just a political affiliation; it’s a catch-all identity that stands in for all of these distinct identities, a master category defined by views on race and multiculturalism that has come to encompass all sorts of other groupings.

Political divides like these are powerful and self-reinforcing; people don’t tend to compromise when their fundamental identity appears to be on the ballot. Hence why it’s like a civil war: A struggle between two nations-within-a-nation without any room for obvious compromise.

“The more sorted we become, the more emotionally we react to normal political events,” the University of Maryland’s Lilliana Mason writes in her book Uncivil Agreement. “The angrier the electorate, the less capable we are of finding common ground on policies, or even of treating our opponents like human beings.”

Each side has some advantages in this war. The Democratic side is more numerous nationally and significantly younger; in theory, they could just wait for Republican voters to die out. But the non-representativeness of American institutions, particularly the Senate and Electoral College, favor Republicans. Blue California’s 40 million residents get as many senators as red Wyoming’s 580,000.

One side will need to beat the other. And while Republicans may have won the first battle by electing Trump, Democrats have won the next by taking back the House — and gaining the power to strike a serious blow to his presidency.

[pbrower2a]

Racism has always been a crusade of swine. It appeals to the lowest level of solidarity. It is tribal. I know -- white racists associate the word "tribe" with anyone that they consider either non-white or 'not white enough'. Racists are typically bigoted against the board, so there are few white racists who selectively despise blacks but not whites or vice-versa. White people can be just as tribal as anyone. When I was relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area from rural Michigan in the 1970's I found that I got along best with Jews and Asians, OK with Latino women (but not men), and sort-of-OK with blacks (there were too few for me to establish any conclusion). The white punks were alienated in the extreme, and they had literal gangs. (Latinos were OK if they weren't in gangs). They could not figure out why I wanted nothing to do with them. That was my experience fifty years ago, and I would not expect the same now. (OK, maybe my real enmity was with gangs. I saw them up to no good, like involvement in drugs. We on the autistic spectrum just don't get along with drunks and druggies).

Democracy depends to no small extent upon the recognition that through democratic process that one cannot get any of the goodies from politics while stabbing others in the back. Suggestions intended to hurt 'lazy, good-for-nothing' black people also hurt similarly 'lazy, good-for-nothing' white people.

...Lately, Jackson, Mississippi has had a water scandal: the tap water is undrinkable, and you would come out of a shower or bath from it dirtier than you went in. Jackson is predominantly black, and white people have as bare a majority as is possible. But white voters cannot recognize the water crisis in Jackson as a disgrace. Michigan, which like Mississippi has no built-in water shortage, solved the Flint water crisis by using a good water supply from Detroit (which may be one of the nastiest cities in America, but it has an excellent water supply made for growth that never happened in the Detroit area.

Democracy works when we practically all see each other as siblings and not "our kind" and "their kind".

[Bob Butler 54]

On another forum, I had reason to review the Texas to Martha's Vineyard via Florida stunt. I concluded that the red hate, or the more deplorable among them. They want to give immigrants, minorities, blue states and liberals a pain. On the other hand, most of the sanctuary cities are blue. They want to help immigrants. Martha's Vineyard may not be the original, but they have a long history of helping and bringing in outsiders. In many ways that is the difference.

This is not a clear DeSantis win. Sure, he may gratify his urge to cause pain and get giggles and applause from the like mind. Ultimately his hope is to gain voting support. But some will remember when they or their family were immigrants themselves. They will not be amused, and not be generous with the votes. Quite the opposite.

Of late Boston Children's Hospital was the target of a misinformation and hate conspiracy. Bomb threats. It seems one department helps children confused by gender issues adopt, and the conservatives took exception, attacking doctors who helped children. Teachers were next. Election workers came before. Hate. Anyone will do, apparently.

They hope to get ahead by hate?

[David Horn]

(09-18-2022, 02:44 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: ... They hope to get ahead by hate?

Sadly, this is the new norm for the GOP.  I'm not in that club (cabal?) so I can only guess that it's their idea of owning the Dems.  I do agree that this is more likely to create backlash than converts, but they're all-in for now.  If they win, expect this in 2024 -- on steroids.  If they lose, they still may try it again.  It's their siren's song, and they're as enthralled as the Dems who pull out their hair.

[pbrower2a]

(09-18-2022, 02:44 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: On another forum, I had reason to review the Texas to Martha's Vineyard via Florida stunt.  I concluded that the red hate, or the more deplorable among them.  They want to give immigrants, minorities, blue states and liberals a pain.  On the other hand, most of the sanctuary cities are blue.  They want to help immigrants.  Martha's Vineyard may not be the original, but they have a long history of helping and bringing in outsiders.  In many ways that is the difference.

Of course. It is a sick, cruel, provocative stunt. I can just imagine what they would do during the winter. Sure, it's nearly 90F in some parts of Michigan, but it won't be that way for long. 

Quote:This is not a clear DeSantis win.  Sure, he may gratify his urge to cause pain and get giggles and applause from the like mind.  Ultimately his hope is to gain voting support.  But some will remember when they or their family were immigrants themselves.  They will not be amused, and not be generous with the votes.  Quite the opposite.

DeSantis has followed the Trump script -- take the most extreme, dehumanizing position and fault those who oppose it for opposing it. They are the ones who literally send the Papists' children to their American friend in Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal. Their American "friend" is a literal cannibal. 

I suggest that descendants of Italian and Polish Americans look back to the time when their Missionary and Lost ancestors came to America, mostly in poverty, and mostly remained in poverty until the Second World War. Their ancestors were looked down upon much like many Latin-Americans are today, in part for being "Papists". Those Latin-Americans are doing much the same things as their Polish and Italian (or second-generation kids) did -- taking crappy jobs and promoting formal education and skills. What they are not doing as well is in joining labor unions, as America has never been more hostile to labor unions since the 1930's. I will discuss that shortly. 

Quote:Of late Boston Children's Hospital was the target of a misinformation and hate conspiracy.  Bomb threats.  It seems one department helps children confused by gender issues adopt, and the conservatives took exception, attacking doctors who helped children.  Teachers were next.  Election workers came before.  Hate.  Anyone will do, apparently.

They hope to get ahead by hate?

Hate is easier to formulate than is a viable program to improve the lives of others. The misinformation is deliberate lying, which we have seen all too often by  base people in high offices in recent years; it ultimately fails even if it comes to dominate the political decision-making. I'm tempted to use the f-word before discussing bomb threats, but that is simply too soft and cheap to express what I think of bomb threats, let alone any successful bombing. 

Children confused about their gender identity need help, especially if teenagers, for that is when they are most vulnerable. Even the least-confusing issue of gender identity, homosexuality, merits kindness. Not long ago it was reported that of males under the age of twenty committing suicide, roughly a third were gay.  There has been improvement in the legal position of homosexuality, but I can only imagine how common the family rejection of LGBT youth is. (A hint to those who call themselves pro-life; if they want to prove themselves truly "pro-life", then they had better support LGBT rights and commit themselves to support for homosexual youth in a difficult stage of life!) It is not easy, as it takes trained people in medicine, social work, and teaching to deal with something which which most people are incompetent to deal. No, you cannot "pray away the gay", and conversion therapy is cruel and of dubious effectiveness. 

I'm on the autistic spectrum, with the least problematic conditions on the DMS-V. My personal life is badly messed up. I could use a solid family life.  Surely I would be far better than the spouse-beaters, child abusers, and sexual predators all too common as a husband. If I must fake empathy I can at least adopt some good habits that look like empathy and avoid bad ones that seem cold or cruel. I have worked with a therapist -- and I wish I had worked with one much earlier, when still young instead of when sixty years old. There are plenty of conditions far worse than Asperger's syndrome, and there are suitable careers for people with it. I am in no way delusional or crazy, I have no chemical dependency (one good thing about autistic people: we are the lightest users of drugs and alcohol except for members of religious groups that condemn them; I proudly proclaimed recently to a cardiologist that I have "Mormon lungs" and a "Mormon liver". I do not do  the  bad things that people with borderline, narcissistic, sociopathic,  or psychopathic personalities do. I'm the sort of person that one can trust with assets, children, spouses, employees, or vehicles. I know of things to do that can keep me from being a crashing bore.

If I could not be cured, then I needed to get away with the condition. That is how I see ethnic and religious differences and homosexuality.