The cancer infecting the political Left

[Einzige]

All bourgeois politicians have cults of personality behind them.

[Bob Butler 54]

(12-09-2020, 06:58 AM)Einzige Wrote: All bourgeois politicians have cults of personality behind them.

All democratic politicians have to attract the voters, and thus form a positive relationship with the people.  The communist dictators don't.  They can rule through force and fear.  I don't consider this a plus for the communists.

Calling serving the people a cult of personality rather than a gathering of personal power?  Are they not nigh on inevitably both?   Is this different between an Lincoln, FDR or Churchill than a Trump?  Is working for the people distinguished from organizing force against them?

I guess it would be in how you define the link with the people.  I would just compare the relations the good democratic politicians have with the people as not a bad thing.

You touch on the difference between Marxist theory and reality.  You have to form a positive relationship with the people.  You have to provide a way that the people can check through means other than violence the tendency of a winner of a revolution to form a new group of elites that controls the means of production and oppresses the worker.  Do that, and Marxism might become a viable candidate again.

But do that and it might be barely recognized as Marxism.  The problem is that democracy is the best way so far to give the people some way of checking the government and elites without violence.  You have yet to propose an alternative.

[Bob Butler 54]

(12-09-2020, 12:40 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Are you a racist? Do you still believe that black are incapable of making it own their own and advancing on the basis of their own merits? I understand that is what the Democrats teach/promote in Democratic run schools and in politics but is it true of all these days.  

Not a racist, but I believe those that adopt ghetto thinking do so because of the inability to get ahead in the face of systematic racism. Give them another path and they might follow it. If you call any other path racist, you are racist.

(12-09-2020, 12:40 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Oh, and the whites Democrats  like you who support them are all pretty much dead meet come crisis time.

Go ahead. Cluck like a chicken. Is that all you have, an obsession with violence and making empty threats?

(12-09-2020, 12:40 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: I'm not either one of them or a Democrat (The closest to a version of them that exists in America today) for that matter. I'm an American and have always been an remember.  I think I've made that very clear and have proven where I stand with people like you over the years. Why are preaching against tribal thinking while you're still into tribal thinking and posting proof of it.

You have stuck with your obsession with violence. Like most extremists, you are capable of disregarding facts when they contradict your ideology. You are capable of projecting your ideology on an imaginary group you call American.

Tribal thinking and WEIRD thinking are opposites. Can you be in favor of WEIRD without dividing between us and them and rejecting them? To a great degree I am opposed to dividing between us and them, thinking poorly of them, and using violence in support of us.

I suppose one difference is the obsession with violence and hatred of those who are perceived as others. Groups like the Boogaloo Bois, bad cops, Proud Boys and Wolverine Watchmen fall into this mode of thinking. Anyone who disagrees with them, who is seen as other, is oppressed with violence. That is tribal thinking at its worst. You indulge freely.

Not all conservatives fall into this pattern. Not all conservatives, unlike the Proud Boys for a little while, will leave their rural strongholds, invade urban strongholds, just to instigate violence. Many rural 'militias' have a genuine belief in the possession of arms. I quite believe they will go violent if someone attempts to pry their guns from their cold dead fingers. But they have always accepted democracy. Their violence has remained only a potential. They do not share your extreme beliefs.

Thus I feel confident that the crisis is already here. The issues that establish the conflict have already been defined. They do not include your fantasies.

[pbrower2a]

(12-09-2020, 02:33 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Obama had a personality cult behind him. What's wrong with your eyes and mind because the two don't seem to be working as well as mine?

Personality cults are covers for leaders of moral and intellectual inadequacy. Example:



Puppet leaders don't have it easy. They must create the myth that they are independent actors while compelled or tricked into doing horrible things on behalf of the overlord. Think of the much-despised King Herod of the New Testament. In the case of Petain one has a leader who was no longer up to the job, someone often derided as senile, depending upon his glories of his past to redeem what he did in what was then the present - like consigning French workers to be cheap labor in the Workers' Hell that was Nazi Germany, stripping refugees from Franco of protection, and acquiescing to the deportation of Jews from France to their deaths in the Holocaust. Other people did worse things than he did, but they were able to cajole him into him into countersigning criminal orders. 

Petain might have been an adequate leader of France in the 1920's... but definitely not in the 1940's.

Senility is not yet accepted as a mitigating factor in a criminal sentence as 'diminished responsibility'. 

Soulless, overmatched political figures, especially those who have a thinly-covered evil beneath the surface are prone to the cult of personality.  

......................

Trump obviously isn't Petain... but he certainly has gross inadequacies as a leader while posing as an exemplar of greatness.  He was a neophyte as a political figure, so he had no idea of how the American political system operates. Contrast Barack Obama, who recognized the complexity of the American political system and of electoral politics, and made his adjustments accordingly. Obama could draw upon history for symbolism and practical solutions. He could even exploit the lore of Chicago gangsters; accounts of the assassination of Osama bin Laden (who of course deserved his end) suggest a gangland hit with more sophistication -- and full recognition of the international optics. 

Bill Clinton had a rakish sex life... but even he recognized it as something to push as much as possible into the background. Trump uses his serial adultery as proof of his manhood. (Gee, how could Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher, Corazon Aquino, or Angela Merkel get away with failing at that!) Trump had an affair with a porn star... a porn star! Considering how unreal pornography is, that affair reflects that Trump is out of touch with the sexual norms of most Americans.  Most people in America's economic elites (and for that matter the middle class) want nothing to do with mobsters... but Trump has had plenty of sordid dealings with the Russian Mafia, which has the viciousness of the old Neapolitan or Sicilian Mafia... and more brains.  Trump is not smart enough to recognize the complexity of political discourse. Can you imagine screeds like those of Donald Trump coming from Twitter  from the Obama Administration? Hardly. Before something got released by Obama as an official communication, he had others read the draft for grammatical flaws, logical gaps, spelling errors, typos, and ambiguities. That is exactly what a good attorney does because any one of those can create an opening for something unwelcome. Words have rigid meanings in legal documents... 

Trump's achievements are slight, on the whole. His biggest achievement (for which a servile Republican party is culpable) is for forcing the nomination and appointment of judicial figures, including three Justices of the US Supreme Court, who believe in an arcane theory of law that fits the idea that, to put it bluntly, "He who owns the gold makes the rules". Maybe it is a good thing, in view of his support of ideas that a majority of voters thought objectionable in November 2020, that he wasn't effective.

[pbrower2a]

(12-09-2020, 06:58 AM)Einzige Wrote: All bourgeois politicians have cults of personality behind them.

More likely it is dictatorial leaders and puppets. I've named names. I could have as easily mentioned Quisling as Petain. 

It is best that we not have a cult of personality as a cover for serious inadequacies in a leader or as a pretext for the worst misconduct possible. Donald Trump has the most blatant cult of personality of a President in office in American history. Heck, FDR chose to ensure that if Americans saw anyone as a near-deity in the American political heritage it would be Washington or Lincoln.

[Classic-Xer]

(12-08-2020, 04:44 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(12-08-2020, 01:10 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Do you want to bet how long he's able to remain in office? His election was a fraud and his condition will be obvious to most within a few years. The government has little integrity and by the time we're done with the Biden/Harris years the government integrity left which will open the door for a national split or a period of government reforms which will result in the destruction of the Democratic party. I doubt the Democratic party could win a two front war.

You seem to be projecting again.  The Republicans have bought into the unraveling mindset, buying into a policy of greed and criminality.  The Democrats are much more in crisis mode.  For a time they will not have a problem with integrity.  They will be working too hard on the crisis problems.  

This will change in time.  Any party which holds power too long will become corrupt.  The mood of the country will shift.  For the moment, though, a swing and a miss.

The only sign of greed and criminality that I've seen so far has been on the Democratic side these days. Yes, the mood of the country is going to switch like its been in the process of switching since Bush was in office.

[Bob Butler 54]

(12-09-2020, 01:39 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: The only sign of greed and criminality that I've seen so far has been on the Democratic side these days. Yes, the mood of the country is going to switch like its been in the process of switching since Bush was in office.

Boy, you must limit yourself to the red media.

[Classic-Xer]

(12-09-2020, 02:48 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(12-09-2020, 01:39 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: The only sign of greed and criminality that I've seen so far has been on the Democratic side these days. Yes, the mood of the country is going to switch like its been in the process of switching since Bush was in office.

Boy, you must limit yourself to the red media.

No, I rely on what I see with my own two eyes and the use of my brain vs relying on media these days. I know who limits themselves media wise. Have you got the courage to watch Faux news yet or are you still ignoring it and avoiding it like the plague these days and going along with the view of the same crowd so to speak?

[pbrower2a]

(12-09-2020, 01:39 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(12-08-2020, 04:44 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(12-08-2020, 01:10 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Do you want to bet how long he's able to remain in office? His election was a fraud and his condition will be obvious to most within a few years. The government has little integrity and by the time we're done with the Biden/Harris years the government integrity left which will open the door for a national split or a period of government reforms which will result in the destruction of the Democratic party. I doubt the Democratic party could win a two front war.

You seem to be projecting again.  The Republicans have bought into the unraveling mindset, buying into a policy of greed and criminality.  The Democrats are much more in crisis mode.  For a time they will not have a problem with integrity.  They will be working too hard on the crisis problems.  

This will change in time.  Any party which holds power too long will become corrupt.  The mood of the country will shift.  For the moment, though, a swing and a miss.

The only sign of greed and criminality that I've seen so far has been on the Democratic side these days. Yes, the mood of the country is going to switch like its been in the process of switching since Bush was in office.

Look for media in the green rectangle. All else is shady to some extent to either worthless (National Enquirer) or even harmful (InfoWars).

[Classic-Xer]

(12-09-2020, 08:55 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(12-09-2020, 12:40 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Are you a racist? Do you still believe that black are incapable of making it own their own and advancing on the basis of their own merits? I understand that is what the Democrats teach/promote in Democratic run schools and in politics but is it true of all these days.  

Not a racist, but I believe those that adopt ghetto thinking do so because of the inability to get ahead in the face of systematic racism.  Give them another path and they might follow it.  If you call any other path racist, you are racist.

(12-09-2020, 12:40 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Oh, and the whites Democrats  like you who support them are all pretty much dead meet come crisis time.

Go ahead.  Cluck like a chicken.  Is that all you have, an obsession with violence and making empty threats?

(12-09-2020, 12:40 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: I'm not either one of them or a Democrat (The closest to a version of them that exists in America today) for that matter. I'm an American and have always been an remember.  I think I've made that very clear and have proven where I stand with people like you over the years. Why are preaching against tribal thinking while you're still into tribal thinking and posting proof of it.

You have stuck with your obsession with violence.  Like most extremists, you are capable of disregarding facts when they contradict your ideology.  You are capable of projecting your ideology on an imaginary group you call American.

Tribal thinking and WEIRD thinking are opposites.  Can you be in favor of WEIRD without dividing between us and them and rejecting them?   To a great degree I am opposed to dividing between us and them, thinking poorly of them, and using violence in support of us.

I suppose one difference is the obsession with violence and hatred of those who are perceived as others.  Groups like the Boogaloo Bois, bad cops, Proud Boys and Wolverine Watchmen fall into this mode of thinking.  Anyone who disagrees with them, who is seen as other, is oppressed with violence.  That is tribal thinking at its worst.  You indulge freely.

Not all conservatives fall into this pattern.  Not all conservatives, unlike the Proud Boys for a little while, will leave their rural strongholds, invade urban strongholds, just to instigate violence.  Many rural 'militias' have a genuine belief in the possession of arms.  I quite believe they will go violent if someone attempts to pry their guns from their cold dead fingers.  But they have always accepted democracy.  Their violence has remained only a potential.  They do not share your extreme beliefs.

Thus I feel confident that the crisis is already here.  The issues that establish the conflict have already been defined.  They do not include your fantasies.

Yes, we have the potential to be become violent and we have opted to remain idle to this point as I've pointed out and reminded you many times. You say WEIRD thinking is the opposite of tribal thinking as you represent, repeat and promote the thoughts that are associated with the blue tribe today. You are going to have to do something about that problem in order to retain whatever amount of integrity you feel or think that you have left. Like I said, I don't really care if you gut the bulk of your police over an incident that occurred in a blue city involving a blue cop and a blue low life who was reported and detained by one of a few law abiding citizens who were left for using a fake twenty dollar bill. Well, Minneapolis has one less blue criminal, one less sketchy blue cop, one less law abiding store owner and one less family owned business to boot.

[pbrower2a]

(12-09-2020, 04:35 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(12-09-2020, 08:55 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(12-09-2020, 12:40 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Are you a racist? Do you still believe that black are incapable of making it own their own and advancing on the basis of their own merits? I understand that is what the Democrats teach/promote in Democratic run schools and in politics but is it true of all these days.  

Not a racist, but I believe those that adopt ghetto thinking do so because of the inability to get ahead in the face of systematic racism.  Give them another path and they might follow it.  If you call any other path racist, you are racist.

(12-09-2020, 12:40 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Oh, and the whites Democrats  like you who support them are all pretty much dead meet come crisis time.

Go ahead.  Cluck like a chicken.  Is that all you have, an obsession with violence and making empty threats?

(12-09-2020, 12:40 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: I'm not either one of them or a Democrat (The closest to a version of them that exists in America today) for that matter. I'm an American and have always been an remember.  I think I've made that very clear and have proven where I stand with people like you over the years. Why are preaching against tribal thinking while you're still into tribal thinking and posting proof of it.

You have stuck with your obsession with violence.  Like most extremists, you are capable of disregarding facts when they contradict your ideology.  You are capable of projecting your ideology on an imaginary group you call American.

Tribal thinking and WEIRD thinking are opposites.  Can you be in favor of WEIRD without dividing between us and them and rejecting them?   To a great degree I am opposed to dividing between us and them, thinking poorly of them, and using violence in support of us.

I suppose one difference is the obsession with violence and hatred of those who are perceived as others.  Groups like the Boogaloo Bois, bad cops, Proud Boys and Wolverine Watchmen fall into this mode of thinking.  Anyone who disagrees with them, who is seen as other, is oppressed with violence.  That is tribal thinking at its worst.  You indulge freely.

Not all conservatives fall into this pattern.  Not all conservatives, unlike the Proud Boys for a little while, will leave their rural strongholds, invade urban strongholds, just to instigate violence.  Many rural 'militias' have a genuine belief in the possession of arms.  I quite believe they will go violent if someone attempts to pry their guns from their cold dead fingers.  But they have always accepted democracy.  Their violence has remained only a potential.  They do not share your extreme beliefs.

Thus I feel confident that the crisis is already here.  The issues that establish the conflict have already been defined.  They do not include your fantasies.

Yes, we have the potential to be become violent and we have opted to remain idle to this point. You say WEIRD thinking is the opposite of tribal thinking as you represent, repeat and promote the thoughts associated with the blue tribe today. You are going to have to do something about that problem in order to retain whatever amount of integrity you feel or think that you have left. Like I said, I don't really care if you gut the bulk of your police over an incident that occurred in a blue city involving a blue cop and a blue low life who was reported and detained by one of a few law abiding citizens who were left for using a fake twenty dollar bill. Well, Minneapolis has one less blue criminal, one less sketchy blue cop, one less law abiding store owner and one less family owned business to boot.

Mercifully you have chosen to not go violent. That is best for us all. If I never see anything like the Michigan plot again... well, that is the wrong sort of excitement.

Tribal thinking is typical in failed societies. Ideally people choose to associate, date, and vote based upon something nobler than identity. If it is going to be identity then let it be culture (as in "we both are involved with horses" or "we both love classical music" instead of "I'm proud to be one of the Deplorable". 

Identity is shallow. It alternatively offers too little and demands too much. 

As for George Floyd -- the cops are not judge, jury, and executioner. If the cops are to kill someone then let it be for protecting the lives of themselves or others. Pull a gun on a cop and expect to die. Every egregious event of police brutality scares the community into being more hostile to the police and demoralizes the police. Maybe we need some basic reforms of police forces so that they are more willing to negotiate someone into a squad car than pull a trigger. 

I do not care about the political values of a criminal. The way things go, if one is a criminal then all other identity becomes meaningless. Once he was convicted of multiple murders, did John Wayne Gacy's past as a contractor matter? He was apparently a good building contractor. Murder made that all irrelevant.

[Classic-Xer]

(12-09-2020, 12:19 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(12-09-2020, 02:33 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Obama had a personality cult behind him. What's wrong with your eyes and mind because the two don't seem to be working as well as mine?

Personality cults are covers for leaders of moral and intellectual inadequacy. Example:



Puppet leaders don't have it easy. They must create the myth that they are independent actors while compelled or tricked into doing horrible things on behalf of the overlord. Think of the much-despised King Herod of the New Testament. In the case of Petain one has a leader who was no longer up to the job, someone often derided as senile, depending upon his glories of his past to redeem what he did in what was then the present - like consigning French workers to be cheap labor in the Workers' Hell that was Nazi Germany, stripping refugees from Franco of protection, and acquiescing to the deportation of Jews from France to their deaths in the Holocaust. Other people did worse things than he did, but they were able to cajole him into him into countersigning criminal orders. 

Petain might have been an adequate leader of France in the 1920's... but definitely not in the 1940's.

Senility is not yet accepted as a mitigating factor in a criminal sentence as 'diminished responsibility'. 

Soulless, overmatched political figures, especially those who have a thinly-covered evil beneath the surface are prone to the cult of personality.  

......................

Trump obviously isn't Petain... but he certainly has gross inadequacies as a leader while posing as an exemplar of greatness.  He was a neophyte as a political figure, so he had no idea of how the American political system operates. Contrast Barack Obama, who recognized the complexity of the American political system and of electoral politics, and made his adjustments accordingly. Obama could draw upon history for symbolism and practical solutions. He could even exploit the lore of Chicago gangsters; accounts of the assassination of Osama bin Laden (who of course deserved his end) suggest a gangland hit with more sophistication -- and full recognition of the international optics. 

Bill Clinton had a rakish sex life... but even he recognized it as something to push as much as possible into the background. Trump uses his serial adultery as proof of his manhood. (Gee, how could Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher, Corazon Aquino, or Angela Merkel get away with failing at that!) Trump had an affair with a porn star... a porn star! Considering how unreal pornography is, that affair reflects that Trump is out of touch with the sexual norms of most Americans.  Most people in America's economic elites (and for that matter the middle class) want nothing to do with mobsters... but Trump has had plenty of sordid dealings with the Russian Mafia, which has the viciousness of the old Neapolitan or Sicilian Mafia... and more brains.  Trump is not smart enough to recognize the complexity of political discourse. Can you imagine screeds like those of Donald Trump coming from Twitter  from the Obama Administration? Hardly. Before something got released by Obama as an official communication, he had others read the draft for grammatical flaws, logical gaps, spelling errors, typos, and ambiguities. That is exactly what a good attorney does because any one of those can create an opening for something unwelcome. Words have rigid meanings in legal documents... 

Trump's achievements are slight, on the whole. His biggest achievement (for which a servile Republican party is culpable) is for forcing the nomination and appointment of judicial figures, including three Justices of the US Supreme Court, who believe in an arcane theory of law that fits the idea that, to put it bluntly, "He who owns the gold makes the rules". Maybe it is a good thing, in view of his support of ideas that a majority of voters thought objectionable in November 2020, that he wasn't effective.

His biggest achievement to date is operation Warp Speed. The political discourse which amounts to a bunch of chickens clucking with little to nothing that's important to most Americans being addressed has accomplished what over the years. The Obama Administration lied to you or withheld information or tried to withhold information how many times? Would Obama been elected if Obama had told everyone about his plan to focus more on providing free healthcare aka a means to remain in office for a 2nd term than rebuilding and growing economies which he was elected to do like Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump were elected to do before and after him? Obama was/is overrated.

[Classic-Xer]

(12-09-2020, 04:53 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(12-09-2020, 04:35 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(12-09-2020, 08:55 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(12-09-2020, 12:40 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Are you a racist? Do you still believe that black are incapable of making it own their own and advancing on the basis of their own merits? I understand that is what the Democrats teach/promote in Democratic run schools and in politics but is it true of all these days.  

Not a racist, but I believe those that adopt ghetto thinking do so because of the inability to get ahead in the face of systematic racism.  Give them another path and they might follow it.  If you call any other path racist, you are racist.

(12-09-2020, 12:40 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Oh, and the whites Democrats  like you who support them are all pretty much dead meet come crisis time.

Go ahead.  Cluck like a chicken.  Is that all you have, an obsession with violence and making empty threats?

(12-09-2020, 12:40 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: I'm not either one of them or a Democrat (The closest to a version of them that exists in America today) for that matter. I'm an American and have always been an remember.  I think I've made that very clear and have proven where I stand with people like you over the years. Why are preaching against tribal thinking while you're still into tribal thinking and posting proof of it.

You have stuck with your obsession with violence.  Like most extremists, you are capable of disregarding facts when they contradict your ideology.  You are capable of projecting your ideology on an imaginary group you call American.

Tribal thinking and WEIRD thinking are opposites.  Can you be in favor of WEIRD without dividing between us and them and rejecting them?   To a great degree I am opposed to dividing between us and them, thinking poorly of them, and using violence in support of us.

I suppose one difference is the obsession with violence and hatred of those who are perceived as others.  Groups like the Boogaloo Bois, bad cops, Proud Boys and Wolverine Watchmen fall into this mode of thinking.  Anyone who disagrees with them, who is seen as other, is oppressed with violence.  That is tribal thinking at its worst.  You indulge freely.

Not all conservatives fall into this pattern.  Not all conservatives, unlike the Proud Boys for a little while, will leave their rural strongholds, invade urban strongholds, just to instigate violence.  Many rural 'militias' have a genuine belief in the possession of arms.  I quite believe they will go violent if someone attempts to pry their guns from their cold dead fingers.  But they have always accepted democracy.  Their violence has remained only a potential.  They do not share your extreme beliefs.

Thus I feel confident that the crisis is already here.  The issues that establish the conflict have already been defined.  They do not include your fantasies.

Yes, we have the potential to be become violent and we have opted to remain idle to this point. You say WEIRD thinking is the opposite of tribal thinking as you represent, repeat and promote the thoughts associated with the blue tribe today. You are going to have to do something about that problem in order to retain whatever amount of integrity you feel or think that you have left. Like I said, I don't really care if you gut the bulk of your police over an incident that occurred in a blue city involving a blue cop and a blue low life who was reported and detained by one of a few law abiding citizens who were left for using a fake twenty dollar bill. Well, Minneapolis has one less blue criminal, one less sketchy blue cop, one less law abiding store owner and one less family owned business to boot.

Mercifully you have chosen to not go violent. That is best for us all. If I never see anything like the Michigan plot again... well, that is the wrong sort of excitement.

Tribal thinking is typical in failed societies. Ideally people choose to associate, date, and vote based upon something nobler than identity. If it is going to be identity then let it be culture (as in "we both are involved with horses" or "we both love classical music" instead of "I'm proud to be one of the Deplorable". 

Identity is shallow. It alternatively offers too little and demands too much. 

As for George Floyd -- the cops are not judge, jury, and executioner. If the cops are to kill someone then let it be for protecting the lives of themselves or others. Pull a gun on a cop and expect to die. Every egregious event of police brutality scares the community into being more hostile to the police and demoralizes the police. Maybe we need some basic reforms of police forces so that they are more willing to negotiate someone into a squad car than pull a trigger. 

I do not care about the political values of a criminal. The way things go, if one is a criminal then all other identity becomes meaningless. Once he was convicted of multiple murders, did John Wayne Gacy's past as a contractor matter? He was apparently a good building contractor. Murder made that all irrelevant.

I'm proud to be one of the so called Deplorable was a brush off and a way to show/tell a bunch of greedy Elites and their political puppets and their clueless supporters that their choice of words didn't bother them and wasn't going to stop them from upsetting them further either. If your governor continues acting like she's a queen and continues acting like there are no laws above her to restrict her power then she might end up being taught that that isn't true and may find herself being kidnapped and left out in the middle of the woods with no compass or clothes. Shit like that could happen to an egotistical woman these days. I mean banning this while allowing that isn't a good way to govern a state.

[Einzige]

What is the objective relationship of these "elites" to the means of production?

[Classic-Xer]

(12-09-2020, 07:01 PM)Einzige Wrote: What is the objective relationship of these "elites" to the means of production?

Dude, there is no such thing as an "objective" relationship when the money and power of elites are either in play or on the line (at risk) these days.

[pbrower2a]

(12-09-2020, 07:01 PM)Einzige Wrote: What is the objective relationship of these "elites" to the means of production?

Elites of ownership (the tycoons) and managerial bureaucracies are able to take a huge chunk of GDP... and this reflects not so much an inherent vice of capitalism as of power over people. 

America has these classic economic elites:

1. estate-style agricultural magnates
2. large-scale urban landlords
3. tycoons
4. the bureaucratic elites of giant enterprises
5. political hucksters
6. organized crime (OK, much in disdain, but they certainly have wealth, power, and connections!)

Even the non-profit sector (churches, universities, hospitals, and foundations) are themselves becoming bureaucratic behemoths. Bureaucratic elites are extremely adept at taking all the loose money that there is while keeping others out of the bureaucracy to the favor of family members and cronies and, of course, treating workers badly with brutal management and keeping people overworked and underpaid. Bureaucracies create no wealth, and a corporation deep into bureaucratic ways is terribly inefficient... and inequitable. 

I had a thread on the life-cycle of business, and the final stage  of a corporation doomed to failure is bureaucracy. The business compels outsiders to adapt to its ways instead of innovating. It cannot attract good workers because anyone working for such a company (Sears was a prime example: is it fully gone now?).  It typically got identified as one of the worst companies for which to work, as it had the following characteristics of a dying firn:

1. losses
2. low wages for employees
3. a steady sell-off of assets to cover losses
4. no innovation 
5. no opportunity

It's easy to figure what sorts of employees that Sears ended up with. What was once a pioneer in retailing became a company reeking of death. The corporate bureaucrats took care of themselves first with lucrative buyouts. 

It is not capitalism; it is power that exploits people while degrading them.

[Bob Butler 54]

Governments have to do more than one thing, at least democratic ones.  Among other things, you have to preserve the lives of your people, keep the economy running, secure the benefits of liberty for your people, and they wind up steering most of the wealth towards the owners of the means of production, be they capitalist or communist.

Communism puts an undue weight on wealth for the communists at the expense of the people, but we should concentrate on the US for now.

In the gun debate, I have always said that the limit on rights is when you harm others.  When you are avoiding wearing masks, social distancing, seeking crowds, you are harming others.  Thus, I tend to have no sympathy for some people’s so called rights and liberty.  I have much sympathy for the mostly blue governors who are attempting to save lives.

Many in the red base have been told the virus is a hoax, and either believe it or pretend to.  This flips the question of liberty being more important than lives around.  Politicians who are preserving lives by curtailing liberties have no justification if you believe Trump’s lies.  Trump’s lies and the red base’s willingness to act on them are thus basic to the problem.  With many hospitals about to pass the breaking point, it will get harder to believe the lies.

Many red politicians have to be loyal to Trump or the red base will get turned against them.  They will lose power, and politicians crave power.  As a result, the cling to Trump’s lies.

Many elites see their own profits as more important than the worker’s lives.  Thus, they may prioritize the economy over lives, unlike most Americans.  Some have come to see that you are not going to fully recover the economy without solving COVID first.  They will encourage masks, social distancing and other precautions.

Too many will cling to one perspective while not taking the others seriously.  Which perspective you see as dominant will determine your actions.  I see them balancing each other.  You will not understand the situation if you do not understand these and other perspectives.

[Bob Butler 54]

(12-09-2020, 06:17 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: I'm proud to be one of the so called Deplorable was a brush off and a way to show/tell a bunch of  greedy Elites and their political puppets and  their clueless supporters that their choice of words didn't bother them and wasn't going to stop them from upsetting them further either. If your governor continues acting like she's a queen and continues acting like there are no laws above her to restrict her power then she might end up being taught that that isn't true and may find herself being kidnapped and left out in the middle of the woods with no compass or clothes. Shit like that could happen to an egotistical woman these days. I mean banning this while allowing that isn't a good way to govern a state.

I would count elites who want to increase the absurd division of wealth deplorable.

I would call a racist who wants to view America as for his white protestant group rather than all deplorable.

I would call those who count their rights as granting an ability to do others harm deplorable. This counts not wearing masks, not social distancing and the other sensible precautions they refuse to take.

I don't know if you would proudly proclaim these three? Are there others you would adhere to? I am not sure you would truly count as a deplorable, though kidnapping, stripping and releasing a woman in the woods perhaps counts.

Or is that the sound of a chicken clucking I hear? That doesn't make you deplorable. Pathetic, perhaps.

[David Horn]

(12-09-2020, 10:59 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(12-09-2020, 07:01 PM)Einzige Wrote: What is the objective relationship of these "elites" to the means of production?

Dude, there is no such thing as an "objective" relationship when the money and power of elites are either in play or on the line (at risk) these days.

A rare case of agreement!  Objective?  No!  Punitive?  Maybe.  The means of production are not the same today as they were, and are moving away from that archaic model at an accelerating pace.  Eventually, if nothing is done to stop it, capital will be the means of production, using AI and smart factories to create literally everything.  The last to die will be the direct service work that you do and that done by cops, restaurant staff and medical people (among others). Eventually, that will go away as well, and there will be no power of labor, because there will be no labor ... only serfs.

[pbrower2a]

(12-10-2020, 10:04 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(12-09-2020, 10:59 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(12-09-2020, 07:01 PM)Einzige Wrote: What is the objective relationship of these "elites" to the means of production?

Dude, there is no such thing as an "objective" relationship when the money and power of elites are either in play or on the line (at risk) these days.

A rare case of agreement!  Objective?  No!  Punitive?  Maybe.  The means of production are not the same today as they were, and are moving away from that archaic model at an accelerating pace.  Eventually, if nothing is done to stop it, capital will be the means of production, using AI and smart factories to create literally everything.  The last to die will be the direct service work that you do and that done by cops, restaurant staff and medical people (among others). Eventually, that will go away as well, and there will be no power of labor, because there will be no labor ... only serfs.

Much of the wealth created these days is intellectual property. Some artist creates a highly-desirable painting, and it sells for $50,000, which is a huge return on talent. But this is Picasso or one of his successors. It's not someone who paints images of Elvis on velvet, which is practically factory-style production complete with effective standardization for veritable mass production. 

On most objects, as the cost of production diminishes on something mass-produced and mass-marketed, so does the cost to the consumer. The relationship between profit and selling cost typically remains, but if commodities get cheap enough then there isn't quite the profit in dealing in the commodity as there once was. It was once possible to make a good living selling consumer electronics such as stereos, televisions, and VCR's. That is over. The people 'selling' those at retail are now clerks at box stores, and they simply scan the object against a detector. As the stuff that a store sells becomes less expensive, then so does the amount of profit on the sale. (This partially explains the demise of some venerable retail chains)...

Technology is one of the drivers of changes in personal behavior (just think of what telephones and automobiles did for dating) and economic realities. Amazon.com can give people choices that their local retailer ignored because its customers have specific purchases intended in contrast to the Sears store that used to be a big part of the activity at a shopping mall. Sears relied heavily upon customers' impulse purchases... and its middle-class shoppers were less willing to buy stuff for which they had no place. (That people are living in smaller dwellings and even sharing apartments to accommodate a reality that landlords can still profiteer from makes people less willing to buy space-eating stuff). Sears ended up competing with Wal*Mart and Target (it did merge with K-Mart, and if I were the boss of that combination I would simply add Sears' signature merchandise into box stores that would reflect the merger by becoming "SMART stores... get it? K-Mart becomes S-Mart" while abandoning Sears' old way of doing business. 

Oddly I see rot in the recent darling of retailing in Wal*Mart. Wal*Mart has a clientele that does much impulse shopping, and it thrives in rural areas in which people can buy consumer schlock and keep it for a few years. What happens when people at the economic low end, including people brought up in the American middle class, start getting fussy about what they buy?