[Newfie]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Newfie', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'Y')ou don't get to tell me that my opinion doesn't count or I'm the problem just because I don't fall in line with your politics, not yet.

[Newfie]

Pops,

What I am sorry for is that we have gotten locked into this contentious exchange. It should return to civil debate with mutual respect.

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Newfie', 'P')ops,

What I am sorry for is that we have gotten locked into this contentious exchange. It should return to civil debate with mutual respect.

[careinke]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ibon', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', '
')
What happened in the 80's you ask? Ronald Reagan and Trickle down economics. The story was that by taxing the already wealthy less, the working classes would get richer. Obviously that didn't work— or rather it worked all too well, just not as advertised.

Notice that this year, finally, the Democrats have realized that while Obama is still liked personally, his extension of the clinton "Third Way" policies that support that upward flow of cash and bail out of the banks lost them an election. In another example of his effort to reach the compromise newfie so craves, obama proposed the Heritage foundation health care plan rather than some type of universal care and not only failed to get one R vote, saw 10 years of attempts to throw people off insurance

It is simple, we are a rich country but we are an even greedier one.

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('careinke', '
')
You're joking , Right????

[EnergyUnlimited]

@pstarr,
Pops of course should answer this but here is my take on the issue:
1. Banksters are eradicating small and medium size farms by causing mass bankruptcies.
2. Banksters and other urban elites are securing this land.
3. Short term strategies are deployed, just to preserve social order for a while more (meantime banksters are stucturizing their assets to make them more revolution immune).
4. Land is destroyed due to overexploitation and food supply chain is broken.
5. There is a panic frenzy in cities and martial law is declared
6. Banksters and elites go to Paraguay and urban mobs go to FEMA camps.
7. Reeducation and reprocessing facilities are set up in FEMA camps. Stronger members of urban mob are reeducated to be manual farm workers and weaker ones reprocessed into fertilizer.
8. With a plenty of fertilizer supply (ex FEMA camps) ecological balance on farm land is restored.
9. Banksters/elites are coming back from Parguay (together with deed titles) and assuming ownership of land as a new aristocracy. Farm workers are subjected to servitude.
10. Feudal system is established. Rothschild becomes to be the first king of America.

[jedrider]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Newfie', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'Y')ou don't get to tell me that my opinion doesn't count or I'm the problem just because I don't fall in line with your politics, not yet.

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jedrider', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Newfie', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'Y')ou don't get to tell me that my opinion doesn't count or I'm the problem just because I don't fall in line with your politics, not yet.

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', 'P')ops, given your familiarity with agriculture and other resource extraction, you must agree that land stewardship is best accomplished by folks who live on the land. Short term gain destroys ecosystems. Family farms work.

Maximization of production (and eventual resulting nationalization) and denigration of the soil on America's farms all for the good of city dwellers would result from the dissolution of local control. Don't believe for one instant that the hoi poloi in the nation's cities would choose organic. Organic is a bougie pretention. Given a choice the pols would see to the strip mining of the ag lands

I don't know or care for the history of the electoral college. It makes sense today. American suburbanites are clueless consuming sheeple who need to be kept penned in, not given too much clout

[jedrider]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ibon', 'S')o when was it that conservatives became so dogmatic? Not only when but what changed that caused this?

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jedrider', 'J')ust interjecting myself into this conversation:
Partisan, what is that? Why are we 'partisan' nowadays whereas, in an age before, we weren't?

[Pops]

The minority rule situation gets this:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')n a significant shift, the Trump administration says the entirety of the Affordable Care Act should be struck down in the courts.

[Newfie]

Google “How to be a Good Liberal”.

There is a Wiki for that - with pictures! Settle in a soft chair, it’s a 3 part series.

https://m.wikihow.com/Teach-Children-Liberal-Values

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A') liberal person believes that the government should take action to help improve the lives of its citizens.[1] Although you may have your own specific opinions about certain politicized topics, if you want your children to learn values that are typically liberal take time to understand the stance of liberal people on political issues. Learn about how you can help children understand and decide what makes sense for them.

[Newfie]

Jdride wrote:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')One reason is that when one side becomes partisan, it forces the other side to become partisan, sort of like a Venn diagram, either you're in or your out, no two ways about it.

[Newfie]

That most elections are decided in the primaries is largely true.

And Hillary knew that, so she bargained and bought herself a bunch of “Super Delegates” to assure he the Democratic nomination, which she thought bought her the Presidency. The Republican primary system has far fewer “Super Delegates” which is one reason why Trump was able to win the nomination, the actual (Republican) voters had more say.

—————

What follows below are my observations about what happened in a small bit of America that I was closely aligned with. Don’t know how much you can generalize this to the larger public. Sorry for the long post, it needs some detail to flesh out the idea.

——————-

Until I stopped voting some years ago I never once voted Republican. Ive been deeply involved in Ethical Culture, (it’s kinda a church for Humanist), served on the Philadelphia board for 14 years, 4 years as President. That’s about as main stream Lefty as you can get.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethical_movement

Since Obama the group became more and more partisan, less thoughtful, more politically aligned. The idea that it was more important to elect a black or woman than a qualified person came to the fore. This is typified by a 2008 comment when a female friend announced to the group “I always knew they would rather have a Black President than a woman.”

I watched those folks swallow Obama’s hopium “hook, line and sinker”, only to be greatly distressed at the consequences. I’ve seen grown folks deeply commit themselves to his election who then were stunned by his actions. I had a woman literally break down into tears in my arms when I said I would not it’s for Obama, only to matter see this same woman become deeply distressed and depressed by what she considered his failures. No person could have satisfied their ambitions, they had grossly over inflate Hope.

This same group doubled down on Hillary. They could not see beyond her sex to evaluated the person. It was the whole Madeline Albright thing “There is a special place in hell for women who don’t vote for Hillary.” That extended to everyone. I think they truly believed, in their hearts, that the wold would be a better and more fair place should Hillary win. Indeed it EEAUIRED her to win to save America if not humanity. Such were/are the anxieties.

I called Hillary a “bitch” and was pilloried as a “racist mysoginist”, it was ugly.

Within this small group of friends, good deeply liberal friends, something happened. When Trump won they became deeply hateful. They can see nothing but blind rage and revenge. Every conversation i have is tense because all they want to do is bash Trump, and I can’t stand the visceral hatred. Of course I’m not talking each and every one, but the fringe sets the limits for conversation. This really impacted me, made a deep, deep impression. All reason is lost.

What I THINK happened is that these folks were scared by Bush, then felt cheated by Obama in the first term, but voted for him again because they though he would do more when he didn’t have to worry about relection, but again felt cheated. They then piled all their hopes onto Hillary. And when she lost, well that was just too much to bear and they had a open target to vent against, a whipping boy who goaded and prodded them. And that has turned on Republicans in general.

——————-

None of this is to excuse Republican and Trump excesses and actions. At this point I’m simply reporting on that small segment of America I could observe.

[Newfie]

Just picked up he Federalist Papers. Gonna be a long read

Found this quote very early in that seemed to fit here.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')
So numerous indeed and so powerful are the causes which serve to give a false bias to the judgment, that we, upon many occasions, see wise and good men on the wrong as well as on the right side of questions of the first magnitude to society. This circumstance, if duly attended to, would furnish a lesson of moderation to those who are ever so much persuaded of their being in the right in any controversy. And a further reason for caution, in this respect, might be drawn from the reflection that we are not always sure that those who advocate the truth are influenced by purer principles than their antagonists. Ambition, avarice, personal animosity, party opposition, and many other motives not more laudable than these, are apt to operate as well upon those who support as those who oppose the right side of a question. Were there not even these inducements to moderation, nothing could be more ill-judged than that intolerant spirit which has, at all times, characterized political parties. For in politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution.

And yet, however just these sentiments will be allowed to be, we have already sufficient indications that it will happen in this as in all former cases of great national discussion. A torrent of angry and malignant passions will be let loose. To judge from the conduct of the opposite parties, we shall be led to conclude that they will mutually hope to evince the justness of their opinions, and to increase the number of their converts by the loudness of their declamations and the bitterness of their invectives. An enlightened zeal for the energy and efficiency of government will be stigmatized as the offspring of a temper fond of despotic power and hostile to the principles of liberty. An over-scrupulous jealousy of danger to the rights of the people, which is more commonly the fault of the head than of the heart, will be represented as mere pretense and artifice, the stale bait for popularity at the expense of the public good.

[evilgenius]

I think the most deep seated thing going on in the United States is that wages haven't kept up with the rest of the economy over a prolonged time. There are lots of calls to tax the rich in order to pay for things. People look at inequality and figure that they can tax those who are on top. The truth is that if working people made the sort of wages they ought to in relation to the other changes that have taken place within the US economy, there would be no shortage of tax money to pay for things. The inequality only represents a portion of what doesn't exist.

I say that, but you can't go back in time. There have been changes which have taken place within the American environment, centralizing economic power, in both the physical, and mental environment. In a way artificial intelligence has become the threat to work that it has because it was brought there by investment in it so that it could continue the trend. People don't see anything wrong with that. They've gotten something for their disenfranchisement. There is some meaning for them in the information world, out of which most economic models now rely upon to extract value from the people by exploiting their personal information. People pay a price beyond what they are aware, yet they enjoy a world that is more developed and expansive than the one they would have lived in had the information age evolved under a different paradigm, one in which they had more economic power due to higher wages across time. As it is, the American worker's contribution has been replaced by foreign investment in the United States. The situation isn't locked, but you'd play hell to reverse it.

Severe problems develop with this new structure, however, when it can be characterized as self-indulgent. There aren't the same checks upon personal behavior as before. Take what is happening with school shootings as an example. The examples resonate with like minded people too easily. The same can be said for workplace shootings. People, in essence, don't seem capable of making decisions without consulting the thing which they have been given to keep them happy in their estrangement, mostly social media, but also darker and more strident means of communication. There is a lot of thought bouncing around out there that isn't tied to any particular consciousness, the way that it would be in an individual mind. People making judgments are seeing elements of that and are essentially symbolizing them, without understanding their derivations. I see you, anti-vaxxers. Many groups are massaging the way that this perception takes place, through conspiracy theory and marketing. It's just as easy to imagine this new arrangement tipping over into mass psychosis as it is to see people helping one another and meeting each other's needs. It's very difficult to imagine any change to the status quo that is actually beneficial, such as real school change that focuses the education of children upon the future world rather than the factory working model of the past, or those underpaid working people agreeing to pay a larger portion of what little they make in taxes, so that infrastructure can change more quickly in response to population or technological changes.