10-31-2020, 03:31 PM
(10-31-2020, 12:05 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(10-28-2020, 11:39 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:(10-27-2020, 11:55 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(10-20-2020, 08:05 AM)David Horn Wrote: Today, the GOP is the problem. Its been the problem for a long time. The Dems are a problem too, but a smaller one. The GOP has been in bed with big business since the day it was formed. Big business doesn't need an advocate. Everyone else does -- especially lower paid employees everywhere. I know you feel that the GOP represents you, but putting yourself in the same class with the known problem will be a net negative in the future -- one you might not escape.
Expect a higher minimum wage, major tax increases and tighter regulation. All are overdue.
Dude, if you lived in New York or California, you'd already have and would already be feeling the impacts of legislating a higher minimum wage, years of legislating higher taxes and imposing tighter regulations. It's a race to the bottom and the Democrats are winning the race. You can expect America to pullout of the race and depart with most of the country before they hit rock bottom.
Your assumption that Humanity is driven only by its greed, lusts, and appetites (Homo oeconomicus) has failed. If I get any Christmas presents this year, then I will probably get them on-line as giver or recipient. Trump really fcuked things up, and we may have to endure a harder and more complete lockdown this coming winter just to stop COVID-19. That is the lockdown that America should have had as a whole, one not compromised for commercial events and predictable festivities. Halloween, election-day celebrations, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years' Day celebrations.... maybe college bowl games... are next. Then the Super Bowl.
230,000 people have died in America so far. Would you like a city the size of Richmond, Virginia or of Boise, Idaho to be wiped off the map? That is the demographic equivalent of the lethal toll of COVID-19 so far: over 230,000.
We have now surpassed the total military casualties of the Union side in the American Civil War. (218,222). In roughly six months we are on a pace to reach the US combat death numbers of World War II... around Christmas. OK, maybe Inauguration Day if things aren't quite as swift. Our President has been appeasing an enemy that has already attacked America, killing about 230,000 people in this country, and he has done little or even counterproductive things against an insidious enemy. To be sure, the Civil War involved a far smaller population of Americans, and the total does not include Confederate deaths... but at least America freed the slaves of the Confederates and the Nazis in the Civil War and World War II. What do we have to show? A President who acts more as a defeatist than as the great leader that Lincoln or FDR was.
America is in a Crisis Era, and good leadership would be acting much more like Lincoln or FDR -- or perhaps even Obama -- in a time like this.
President Biden (he will be President barring catastrophic electoral fraud of the sort that nullifies votes or otherwise falsifies the results) will have his work cut out for him. Trump has pushed his swinishness upon as many people as he possibly could. That is difficult to remove from people. Don't try to convince me that Donald Trump is anything other than a catastrophic failure. He had te possibility of promoting prayer instead of partying, work instead of idleness, and sacrifice instead of resentment of what gets in the way of indulgence.
The current President has 230 thousand deaths (and counting) on his hands, and he sees nothing wrong with his incompetence and negligence. We have nothing to show for this. We have liberated no concentration camps or plantations. We are not striking back at a demonic enemy.
I hope you aren't foolish enough to believe that Biden has the power to snap his fingers and make COVID go away the moment he's sworn in. Gee, we could do the same as you're doing now (acting like a mindless political hack) and blame everything related to COVID on Biden and do it in a way that makes it stick.
Of course not. The influenza plague of a century ago also had four waves, the second connected to celebrations of the end of the (in the language of the time) the "Great War".
If you have seen the political ads for Joe Biden, none of those suggest that stopping COVID-19 will be easy. It will necessitate the development of a vaccine both safe and effective, and a logistical system for ensuring that people get the vaccine. It is Donald Trump who trivialized the hazard. Joe Biden has wisely encouraged people to lower their expectations of any quick solution. We are at war, and the best leaders are more likely to overstate the likelihood of a loss and severity of consequences of failure instead of assuming that their personal greatness will solve everything. Mussolini is a sick joke, and the ages judge Lincoln and Churchill well.
I expect President Biden to give us the fresh opportunity to get the response to COVID-19 right... this time. 233,000 (and counting) people have died in a costly, bungled stalemate because our Coward-in-Chief has appeased an enemy even after it has attacked us.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.