They might be dangerous, but the income was predictable. We need an economy that provides stable income, even if it doesn’t always provide stable employment. People will eventually turn against capitalism otherwise.
I’m not sure it’s always racism…originally.
When you speak of white america dying, you mentioned that they’re losing factory jobs and dying of chronic disease, alcoholism, and opioid overdoses while women and monorities’ lots are improving. The thing to note is that those two things have nothing to do with one another. They’re losing their factory jobs because of of unfettered capitalism finding more profitable approaches than employing them. They’re dying of chronic disease because of substandard medical care. They’re dying of addictions because they’re broke and have nothing better in their lives, and (again) because of substandard medical care.
Everything that’s destroying their lives is either directly caused by or directly promoted by the republican party. Their party has very literally used them, abused them, and abandoned them to die with no support whatsoever.
Republicans blame women or minorities or liberals or anyone but themselves, because they have to - they’re the ones at fault for the very specific problems that are making their constituents angry. And because the republicans can’t afford their constituents realizing this, the shifting of the blame is constant and relentless.
And thus, while there certainly are numerous conservatives who turned racist and sexist before they even knew what employment was, I’m sure that there are many more who are only racist because the republicans have been using minorities as a human shield to deflect blame that is justly their own.
Agreed. But how we get there is not by going back.
Whether it be a UBI, or ensuring that everyone has access to the education necessary for today’s and tomorrow’s jobs, or both, we need to look to progressive ideas to provide that security.
And I think they often conflate their memories of “when America was Great” to their own personal experiences. It’s not just the yearning for the good old days when white guys were on the top of the world. It’s a yearning for the time in their life when they were 25 or 30, their wife was still hot, they still had aspirations, people cheered their athletic skills, their dick worked every time.
And I am always compelled to point out their one blind spot whenever they start talking about “how we used to do big things and we don’t anymore” the space program, the interstate highway system…
The US could do those things because they could afford it. The top marginal tax rate was 91% in the year I was born. America was “made great” with big government and the tax dollars of the very rich. In other words, liberal ideas.
I agree. In a certain sense, I think Eisenhower was more liberal than recent Republicans like Bush Jr., definitely more liberal than Trump, and in some ways even more liberal than Obama and Clinton. If somehow we could get the 1952 version of Eisenhower in a time machine and bring him to the current day, he’s probably be accused of being a socialist and a liberal. But these were supposedly the “good old days” that conservatives want to bring back.
I think the reason that I can’t make sense of what the conservatives want is not just because the good old days aren’t quite how they remember them. It’s because the way they want them to be is pretty much impossible. There is no possible world in which stealing from the poor to give to the rich is going to make their lives better, but yet that is (at least it seems to me) what they want.
Absolutely no disagreement - I agree 100%.
As I said, the problem is ignorance. Economics is more in the abstract than. Blaming a white community’s misery on Chinese overseas and Mexican immigrants is a lot easier than blaming economic policies that encourage the concentration of wealth. The moment you start talking about the need to raise taxes on the rich, it’s met with skepticism about what taxing the rich has to do with anything that’s affecting working class community. That’s why it’s easy to claim that taxes are nothing more than ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’ or ‘punishing’ the ‘achievers’ and ‘job creators’ for being successful.
As loony as some of his ideas seemed, this is partly why I liked Andrew Yang’s candidacy. You can certainly debate the merits of a dividend check cut to each and every American each month, but it’s less debatable to say that automation is going to create some serious problems for the job market, and if anything, I think the current pandemic is going to be a dislocation accelerator. Many foothold jobs that Americans use just to gain footing in the economy before hopefully moving on to something else are probably gone forever now.
Dude, I stopped being an arch-conservative years ago and even I feel responsible for Donald Trump.
… but then, perhaps that ability to understand my personal complicity in things is why I’m an ex-conservative.
“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
― Lyndon B. Johnson
Are you suggesting that I should feel personally responsible for the election of Donald Trump? Even in light of post #50?
~Max
Don’t recall saying you should feel responsible, but I don’t know, maybe you should?
My point was, I take on my share of responsibility for this clusterfuck for a lot of reasons:
- I believed and spread conservative bullshit from about 1988-1998.
- The increased lying I was seeing on the Right from the mid-90s did not deter me from voting for Bush in 2000 or 2004, or other Republican candidates.
- I, very often, took the easy way out and didn’t confront bullshit when I was confronted with bullshit.
- I felt complacent because Obama was in the WH and never made the case as to why he should be there, especially to fellow whiteys.
- And by the time I finally realized the severity of the problem, it was too late - the man was elected and white, male America had immersed themselves in a delusional alternate reality from which there may be no escape.
You may not feel responsible - more power to you if you don’t - but, yeah, in my way, I do.
I wasn’t sure about the implication with your direct reply, that’s why I asked. I’m glad that you opened your eyes. I respect you for taking responsibility and for your persistent, sometimes even rational zeal in these forums.
~Max
I might have missed it, did @agzem ever provide those cites?
Ha! You’re hilarious!
Yes. Scroll up.
I looked at your posts in this thread, and there are none between the quoted post and the one I’m replying too.
Yes I have noticed that after I debunk somebody’s claims they get embarrassed and troll me on a different thread to make it harder to see how their claims were thoroughly dismantled with facts and logic. Here you go:
Tara Reid, Lucy Flores ,Ally Coll, Sofie Karasek ,Amy Stokes Lappos, Caitlyn Caruso,DJ Hill, Vail Kohnert-Yount
Tara Reid is a con-artist potentially mentally ill person.
Lucy Flores wrote this article:
Where she wrote:
I’m not suggesting that Biden broke any laws, but the transgressions that society deems minor (or doesn’t even see as transgressions) often feel considerable to the person on the receiving end. That imbalance of power and attention is the whole point — and the whole problem.
Ally Coll said,
Biden squeezed her shoulders, complimented her smile, and held her “for a beat too long.” A young Democratic staffer at the time, Coll said her initial reaction was to shrug it off. But she told the Post she now feels the alleged incident was inappropriate, adding, “There’s been a lack of understanding about the way that power can turn something that might seem innocuous into something that can make somebody feel uncomfortable.”
The rest are mentioned here:
I was gonna go through the names one by one, but it really seems like you have no idea what you’re talking about.
Well if we are using that standard then no one who has accused Trump can be trusted either. Right?
“E. Jean Carroll said she does not want to consider herself a victim and does not describe the incident with Donald Trump as a rape”
It is a sexual assault, which is what you claimed Biden’s accusers had levied against him. Turns out it wasn’t true, with the exception of Tara Reid, who is possibly mentally ill, and certainly a con-artist.
So, you have made a claim, it is utterly wrong. In defense of that claim, you point to someone who has actually accused Trump (credibly) of the very same crime you inaccurately claimed Biden was guilty of.
Please, I beg you, at least be embarrassed that you’ve failed this utterly.