Warlords don’t give you a vote. Warlords don’t provide Social Security or Medicare. Warlords don’t recognize any minimum wage or occupational safety and health laws. Warlords can discriminate however they damn well please. Warlords can and usually do sexually harass and assault any women they damn well feel like possessing for a moment or a lifetime. Warlords don’t hold town halls where the people they rule over can bitch at them about how things are being run. Warlords don’t allow independent sources of news. Etcetera.
Once is ‘far too often,’ but I’d still rather take my chances with a democracy such as ours than with a failed state where power comes directly from the barrel of a gun.
Welcome to the 21st Century, the era of the kinder, gentler Warlord.
Sure, there’s no doubt our system is preferable to most others presently in existence.
RTFirefly addressed this, but seriously, are you not aware of the phrase “checks and balances”? Or do you think that Warlords are real good about respecting limits on their power?
One major reason why Republicans are currently so scary (to bring the thread back on track) is that the party is so unwilling to act as a check on the President’s most warlord-like impulses. Congress is supposed to limit the power of an out-of-control executive; Republicans who control congress are manifestly unwilling to do so.
That’s why conservatives like Max Boot advise fellow conservatives to Vote against all Republicans. Every single one. Temporary partisan gains are, for them, less important than maintaining a healthy system of checks and balances, so we don’t descend in to the situation you seem to believe we’re already in, functionally equivalent to warlordism.
Well, the nice thing is most of the pundits I’ve seen are not as smugly overconfident as we saw in 2016. That’s the way it should be, and I hope it stays that way for a long time.
The problem with that is even if you disagree with 93.1% of The Donald’s agenda or rhetoric judicial appointments are so important nowadays you have to factor those into the calculation.
So you’re saying every government is a warlord; the only question is the extent.
If you disagree with 93% of The Donald’s agenda and rhetoric, you probably disagree with 93% of his judicial appointments as well.
Yes.
Kinda like how Holden Caulfield calls everything ‘phony,’ all governments are ‘warlords.’
Useful. :rolleyes:
Since the appointments aren’t going to be clones I don’t think that is necessarily the case.
I don’t think this is true and therein lies the danger. Here in Orange County, CA, you meet many decent, intelligent, hard working Republicans who all realize that Trump is (arguably) one step up from a feces flinging chimpanzee but voted for him anyways because they would rather have Republicans appointing justices to the Supreme Court rather than Democrats. They may roll their eyes at the latest tweet but they’re pretty happy with the long term shift in the balance of power at the judicial level.
E.T.A. to stay on topic. These people WILL show up to vote on Tuesday to keep things in Republican control as much as possible which is why I think the midterms will be closer than the special elections have tended to be. The Kavanaugh hearings were a strong reminder to them of what’s at stake.
Even if this bizarre statement is your belief, revisit what I said earlier: it’s not like a lack of government disempowers wanna-be warlords. The reduction of government simply removes the constraints that non-warlords can place on them. I am no longer an anarchist because I was persuaded that, for all the terrible things people do through the mechanism of government, they can do even worse things without that mechanism in place.
Yea I really am…I’ll keep an eye out for it. Thanks for the response, have a good one
Government, historically, is a strong contender for terrible doing. The 20th century examples of Germany, China, Japan, and the USSR come to mind.
I’m not an anarchist. I believe that government has legitimate functions.
Again, this is pretty far afield. I’ll say that what changed my mind about blaming government, rather than charismatic sociopaths, is Pinker’s book The Better Angels of our Nature. When there’s not a centralized government, it seems like there’s more homicide, not less.
If you want further discussion, bump an old thread about that book, or else start a new one.
Are you saying there is less opportunities for minorities since the 60’s and 70’s? I guess it is different elsewhere but like I said the demographics here in my home town and in a lot of places throughout the southeast. I see more of my customers being minorities and they have successful businesses and are in middle class and upper business districts. Their customers aren’t just minorities either, most have a broad base of customers not just one or two. In Florida some of our best accounts are hispanic, african american or asian a melting pot seriously and Florida the stores used to be snow birds from the north east.
My company and industry isn’t minorities specific either, these people just got the opportunity and ran with it. LOL is literally multicultural too. Middle eastern, Asian, Indian, Pakistani. My high school which was mostly caucasian in the 80’s and small has one of the most diverse student bodies in the southeast, wins academic awards and now has one helluva soccer team has gone up two to 3 regions. In the early 70’s lets just say it was tense as things shifted at the high school and neighborhood in general but now honestly its a much much better atmosphere than when I was in high school. We just knew when the mass transit station was built it was going kill suburbia, but its actually enhanced it, property values have sky rocketed and the population is mixed, relatively content and middle class to down right affluent.
To any moderate Republicans reading this: The Republicans now have a solid conservative majority on the Supreme Court. You no longer have that as an excuse. If you are at all concerned about this President, and want there to be some check, ANY check on his power, I plead with you to vote Democratic in this midterm.