So we had a stolen election in 2000. It’s not the first time there’s been a stolen election and that guy’s no longer in office.
So we had a war in Iraq. Iraq doesn’t compare to Vietnam.
So we had an armed lunatic threaten the President. Have you heard of people like Lee Oswald or Sirhan Sirhan or Jimmy Ray or Samuel Byck or Squeaky Fromme or Sara Jane Moore or Arthur Bremer or Talmadge Hayer or Dan White or Byron De La Beckwith or John Patler or Richard Pavlick?
So we have people who deny reality. You think ignorance was invented five years ago?
Learn some history. It gives you some sense of perspective. There’s nothing bad happening in America today that we haven’t gone through and survived in the past.
So you’re saying we should not care about a Republican coup? The problem with the uninformed is that they are the base of one of the two major parties in the US. We have a party of religious fanatics who wage holy crusades with the US army, reject learning and have a medieval level understanding of the scientific world and that is not cause for concern? If they were just moronic fringe it would not be an issue, but they a major political force in America now, precisely at a time when other players are emerging on the global stage to challenge our place.
And I agree that Iraq is not Vietnam, by the time it is over, we will wish Iraq was just another Vietnam. We will be dealing with the consequences of Iraq in the middle east for decades.
Yeah, that coup was something else. To paraphrase Wellington, I never seen so many shockingly bad hair pieces. And all of those military uniforms and ribbons! At least the fighting was contained in the big cities and a few of the less necessary states. It was too bad about North Dakota, but when you use nuclear weapons from orbit, what are you going to do?
At least the causalities, both civilian and military, were less than 5 million total, ehe? Silver lining and all that, what?
The problem with the deluded is they use a lot of hyperbole that undercuts their own positions and make them look like loons.
And on the other hand we have a party of left wing loonies who are completely out of touch with reality, wouldn’t know good economic policy if it sat in their lap and called them mama, and want to destroy our economy and take us back to living in caves and scrounging for snacks along the country side while attempting to live in harmony with our fellow happy and friendly Forrest dwelling brethren and sistren.
But then reality sets in, the curtain is drawn and we see that, lo! Both of these positions are cartoon characterizations of the other side. The only good part is that one of us realizes this…
And you base this on your own keen, eagle eyed assessment demonstrated above, no doubt, ehe? Pardon me if I don’t place any heavy wagers on your assessment…I’m laughing a bit too hard right now.
Unlike the previously century where we were dealing with the consequences and actions of the Middle East, right?
No; the only good part is that that portrayal of the Left is complete wrong ( not even accurate enough for a caricature ). The portrayal of the Right however is fairly accurate. And he didn’t even bring up things like torture.
Face it; the Republicans have become so warped that caricature of them is nearly impossible. They are a group overwhelmingly composed of incompetents, bigots, fanatics, corporate fascists and literal raving looneys. The dregs of America.
I also forgot to mention warrantless wire taps, using the department of “justice” to go after Democrats on the eve of elections, and committing treason to punish dissent (Plame); what can I say, it’s been a long day and I missed some things.
As well as Church and State, you’ve got to put a barrier between State and capitalist interests. Legal funding of politicians is only part of the issue.
You might then begin the process of developing a political class worth its name.
Obama doesn’t automatically get his fantasies enacted, so the USA is falling apart? Boo fucking hoo.
Note to liberals in general and Democrats in particular - grow a pair, can’t you? Reread post #14. If it makes sense to you, act accordingly. If it doesn’t, try that “grow a pair” thing again.
I think that politics seems a lot more contentious now because changes in mass communication allow a lot more voices to be heard. In the days of three networks and one or two daily papers, political dialogue at a large-scale level was confined within a relatively narrow band of center-left and center-right. This was a product of both the prevailing philosophies at those institutions and the lowest-common-denominator mechanics that produced decades of tepid TV.
Now, we have fragmented cable channels and bloggers, and a lot more range for political opinions to get aired to a large number of people. These voices on the left and right have always been there, it’s just that it’s now easier to hear them.
I won’t weigh in on any of the issues, but I’ll point this out:
Long term predictions are always wrong.
The Russian guy cited in the OP? He’s wrong. You know how I know he’s wrong? Because he’s making a long term prediction about large scale, complicated events, and those predictions are always wrong. This stuff can never be reliably predicted, ever. The political conditions that will prevail in the3 USA in, say, 10 or 15 years will be quite different from how they are now in many ways, and likely in many ways not I or anyone else on the SDMB or anywhere else would expect.
25 years ago nobody knew the Soviet Union was close to fizzling out like an old balloon - and that event was just five years away from 1984.
For fun, find an old copy of 1980’s “The Book of Predictions” (by the same people who made The Book of Lists) and look up the predictions for the future by experts. Many of the experts really were experts. Their predictions were absurdly, comically wrong, almost all of them. The only ones that came true were short term and very generic. (A few people predicted, in very general terms, e-mail, the Internet, computer animation and a general explosion of available information, but of course that stuff already existed in 1980, just in primitive forms.) These were not idiots; many of them were top minds.
For the most part, the reason the more sober predictions are all wrong is that the person believed things would continue more or less as they were going in 1979. It would be equally stupid to assume things will always continue more or less the way they did in 2009.
Don’t sell yourself short. You have just as many uncivilized lunatics.
I agree with mswas. You all sound like a bunch of bitches crying in your mocha double-latte in some coffee shoppe somewhere a few blocks from campus. The world is not going to tear itself apart just because there are people who don’t agree with you.
The OP obviously didn’t live through the 60s. What went on then makes this look like a tea party. Frankly, most people don’t pay much attention to politics, and that’s a good thing in many ways. They’re too busy going about their lives. No states are going to secede. As for health care reform, it should be done at the state level, not the federal level. We’re too big a country to agree on how something like that should be handled.
We had a close election that could have gone either way.
Cheney was the main driving force behind the Iraq war. He’s many things, but no a religious fanatic. Vietnam was 10 times the war Iraq has been.
We had radical groups like the Weathermen blowing up buildings. We had race riots and lynchings. We had college kids killed during peaceful protests.
Who is that?
No different then, maybe even more of those types in the 60s. In the early 60s, it was not uncommon to have prayer in public schools or for public schools to have Bible readings on a daily basis.
We had people who thought George Wallace was the way forward for America. He actually ran for president and carried 5 states. Get back to me when Palin does that.
Yeah man this is populist democracy. If you care so much about it get to the demonstrations and tell these people what you think personally.
In a real Democracy the people should be in dialogue directly with each other and with their governments.
The left has it’s share of dopes too. Like all the Free Mumia placards at Free Palestine rallies. They can’t get their leftist cause straight and these professional protestors make every issue into a muddled incoherent message.
I think it’s funny to watch the Right-Wing go all radical take to the streets. It’s to me a kind of equalizing thing. After having seen the idiocy of leftist protests in action, it just kind of levels the playing field.
Nope. She’d have to either win the Republican primary (which she won’t) or run as an independent and beat the Republican candidate in 5 states (which she wouldn’t).
There’s a chance that the republicans might run somebody “not quite white” like Bobby Jindal, to try to sway away some of the people who only voted for Obama to break that barrier (sort of like how they put Michael Steele as chairman; entirely reactionary).
In that case, the racist folk would be stuck. If there were a Palin/Plumber third party ticket, that’d give the teabaggers something to aim their voting sticks at.
I’m starting to feel similarly, honestly. Not necessarily a monarch but I am starting to feel like being terrified of re-election every couple years is just as bad as being a puppet of lobbyist (which itself is one of the biggest problems in our government.) And I find this to be so true it scares me.
Now, that being said . . . the only reason I know most of this birther/townhall/secession talk, etc is going on is because I read about it here. NOBODY I know in real life is talking about this stuff and I know plenty of politically-minded people. Cable news has gone completely sensational - no, don’t just blame FOX News, it’s every one of them - and I quit watching it. I think it would do a lot of you a lot of good to do the same. It serves no purpose other than to get your blood boiling. Same goes for all these websites you people read that freak you out. Drudge, Freep, Huffington, etc. I listen to NPR and ocassionally skim Google News and that’s it. Anything big enough to matter will be there. You have to get to a point where you realize you need to focus on the practical side of politics which is living your life.
Are there any other Western countries that get by with only two parties? As a Brit living in Sweden I can’t help but feel that this is the very source of the problems. US politics is almost 100% bipartisan but neither side really needs to give an inch as they know that if they just wait long enough the public at large will get bored (or angry enough) with the current side in power and then there’ll be a shift to the other side.
Genuine question: what’s the longest streak of successive presidents for a single political party in the US?
