If you’re (not you you, the general you) a decent person and a Republican that cares about the country, lots. Sadly, the current crop of Republicans seem more interested in party over country. And the vast majority of Republicans supporters seem to be the same (again, not 100% all but an awful lot, like 75-85%). The best thing Republican voters could do for the Republican party would be to vote Democrat in the next couple of elections. If the vote is 80% Democrat, then the Republican party will clean itself up out of nothing more than self-preservation. Whatever damage you think the Democrats might do in the time they’re in power, pales in comparison to the damage that the current batch of Republicans are doing to the underlying principles of the USA and democracy.
And this, of course, isn’t to say the Democrats are angels. I’d never vote for them if they were a party in Canada. Maybe with the way the CPoC is headed I might be willing to vote for them over them, but even then probably not. But right now, in 2018, the Republican party has gone off the rails and allied themselves with the very worst that America has to offer. A true Republican patriot would vote country over party in order to save their party and their country.
And who did they look for as their first customer?
The US Army Signal Corps, under the guidance of Lt Colonel Frank Lahm.
Whom did they petition… and receive from… the vast majority of aeronautics and mechanical knowledge required for the development of the Kitty Hawk plane?
The Smithsonian Institution.
The idea that the Wright Brothers developed the plane without the help of “the government” and then developed their business apart from “the government” is so easily refuted all one has to do is look up their Wiki article.
I mean, the idea that the Wright Brothers are an example of what can happen without the government is valid, only if you ignore the government’s role in supplying them with the information needed to develop the plane and the government’s role in being the first purchasers of the plane. Other than that… information and money… yeah, they had no governmental help at all. :rolleyes:
I mean, 1901-me, too, can develop a plane for $1,000 if I, too, use $70,000 of knowledge and experience spent by the government!
and yet the government-funded aircraft which cost 70x more, didn’t work and the Wrights developed most of their aerodynamic knowledge on their own through experiments with different airfoil design. I know I am in a tiny minority of non-leftists on this board, but I think the left-tilt has gotten a lot stronger in the last several years. I took a break from SD for about 3 years. It’s frightening how polarized the country is.
… are you changing the subject? I will gladly take that as a concession to the minor point re: the Wright Brothers dependence on governmentally-derived knowledge and financing.
Nope. I am saying that the government funded plane, did not work and Langley complained about not being funded enough. Sure the government bought the plane after it worked. Why didn’t theirs work? If you think government-designed planes are better, go fly a Tupolev sometime. Ever been on a Tu-154 or IL-62?
It is considered that Hitler won in the end because thanks to the strong showing of support to the Nazi party. Hinderburg eventually gave Hitler the post of Chancellor because of the need of forming a coalition government.
You should read David McCullough’s biography of the Wrights, then you wouldn’t be so confused.
No one is saying that government funding gives you wisdom. The Wrights didn’t succeed because they didn’t have government money, they succeeded because they were the Wrights. But it would have taken them a lot longer without the data they got.
The atomic bomb was developed totally with government funding. That worked pretty well, didn’t it?
And I’m saying, and the historical record proves, that it took $71,000 of American R&D funding to develop the airplane: $70,000 by the Smithsonian… which then gave its results to Wilbur and Orville… and $1,000 by W&O.
To claim that the Wright Brothers did it all by themselves works only if you ignore the fact that they had access to $70,000 of governmentally-funded research. Had the Wrights not had that research, they very likely would have made the same mistakes as the Smithsonian group… well, they would have run out of money first, to be honest.
Your revision of history is akin to saying that Jobs and Wozniak had no government assistance in developing the Apple 1. Perhaps, in the most direct sense, they did not… but they sure as hell relied on the outcomes of billions of dollars of government funding of the computer industry starting with Hollerith in the 1880s, continued with the financial resources accorded ATT after the Kingsbury commitment of 1912, followed up by the Feds (and British) work in computing during WW2, adding to that mix the government funding of research labs and universities in the post WW2 environment. But, yeah, other than that, the government had no involvement in the development of the computer.
Same thing goes for flight. Massively governmentally funded (for its day), the Wrights just rode in on the backs of others.
I think the danger to the US is to say that every person who belongs to a given political party is morally bankrupt.
It is true that the Republicans in Congress are doing whatever is possible to stay in power, even if some of those acts are not in the best interests of the country. I am sure that we could point to examples of the Democrats doing the same thing during times that they were in the majority. (Although I was an Obama supporter I was never happy with how the ACA was rammed through along party lines, and I think that bred a significant amount of Republican resentment that is still festering.) The difference I see now is that we have possibly one of the worst, most divisive presidents in modern history so the behavior of Congressional Republicans is becoming a caricature of itself. But there are millions of reasonable, moral people who still support the traditional Republican philosophy, even if the current leaders of the party have abandoned it.
Trump is what happens when “binders full of women”, “47%”, makes you a terrible person who “wants to put y’all back in chains”. Dems cried wolf so many times, by the time Trump came along they weren’t to be taken seriously.
It’s going to get worse and worse, as long as we have the kind of discourse that says if I disagree with you, you’re not wrong, you’re evil. This affects both sides, of course. I don’t know when that will happen, and maybe it won’t. But I hope it does.
Things won’t go back to normal until a true centrist wins. But I am 99% sure Trump will be the republican nominee in 2020, and I think the democratic party is swinging harder left rapidly to their own peril.
Well, the Democratic Party has been veering right since Clinton’s triangulation strategy of the 1990s and you see where it has gotten them. Not too sure if more of the same “we can be conservative too!” is the right answer, tbh.
I’d argue that’s actually an example of the Republicans in Congress doing whatever is possible to stay in power, even if some of those acts are not in the best interests of the country. The reason the ACA was “rammed through along party lines” was that the Republican leadership made it their highest priority not to give Obama any victories. The actual content of the ACA matches the kind of things Republicans had advocated for in the past.
False equivalence:Almost no one is noting the extraordinary influence Republicans had on the healthcare reform bill crafted by the Senate, as it made its way through the committee process last year. The bill approved by Sen. Christopher Dodd’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee, for instance, included 161 amendments authored by Republicans. Only 49 Republican amendments were rejected out of 210 considered. Yet the bill got zero Republican votes when it passed out of the committee.
This statement can only be taken as true if by “rammed through” you mean universally opposed on partisan lines after a concerted attempt to get bipartisan feedback that weakened every effort to control cost growth in health care and the pharmaceutical industry. Meanwhile, the conservative mantra that “the market” will somehow reduce costs through competition and consumer choice is a wholly unsubstantiated claim that isn’t given any validity by companies like Mylan engaging in extortionary price increases on critical life-saving drugs purely to increase profits.
While it may not be that every Republican is personally “morally bankrupt”, those who continue to tacitly support their party and not speak out while it is hijacked by fear-mongers, white nationalists, and wealthy corporate interests using their influence to shut down legitimate scientific research on issues concerning the health and safety of the public at large are aiding and abetting blatant corruption and malicious profiteering. This rationale of “…but the other side is just as bad!” is just unapologetic dissimulation.
It’s also what happens when “If you like the plan you have, you can keep it.” Now I happen to support ACA and universal health care, but this statement alienated a lot of people who found out that they could not practically keep their plan.
This is true, although my feeling was that Obama was so invested in ACA that he was going to get it to pass at any cost. However, it is also true that the Republicans were spectacularly obstructionist, and I have detested McConnell ever since he refused to even conduct a confirmation hearing for Garland.
I knew that the Republicans opposed it but I had not realized that they ambushed it after appearing to cooperate. Point conceded
I agree on this point as made here. The point as made in the OP is much broader.
Perhaps, but it should be recognized that the descent of the GOP didn’t start with the nomination of Donald Trump, or forcing John McCain to select Sarah Palin as his running mate, or even putting George W. Bush in office over a questionable election. The rot started as far back as Goldwater—the original “pandering-to-bigots-and-fear-mongering Conservative”—and achieved its fruition with Newt Gingrich, one of the most dishonest, disingenuous, and manipulative people to occupy the Speaker of the House before his forced resignation. The Democrats have their own history of corruption and malfeasance, and in the case of the Dixiecrats, systemic repression, but they have never conspired as a group to undermine the security and economic well-being of the nation the way the current crop of Republicans have in the past few years strictly to benefit themselves and their party above all. And doing so in the guise of being the “Party of Lincoln and Eisenhower” is manifestly disingenuous, as neither man would recognized the current GOP as representing their political ideology.
Just the fact that Senate Republicans acted as a block to prevent Merrick Garland from even having a confirmation hearing—a historical first for anyone nominated by a sitting President to the Supreme Court—or have worked to pass a health care bill not only without input from the opposition party but behind closed doors with no independent review whatsoever shows you how they feel about democracy and fair representation even before participating in or concealing efforts by members of their party in conspiring with an unfriendly foreign power. Republicans refusing to leave or speak out against their party leadership in these things out of fear that it might hand an election to a Democrat are betraying the essential principle of patriotism; to hold their fidelity to country as more important than even loyalty to their party.
The issue is that as mentioned the intellectual and moral rot in the republican party dates back to the 60s and the southern strategy.
But there has also been a shift where whites who score high on authoritarianism are flocking to the gop in modern times. Even compared to Bush sr, who only won something like 60% of white authoritarians, Trump won 86% of them.
Also I used to wonder how in the south, a white man could commit a horrific crime against a black person and a jury would refuse to convict.
But seeing how Americans act with Trump, I can see it. I’m sure a lot of Trump supporters would vote not guilty for Paul manafort or any other Trump criminal if they were on a jury.
Trumps election and his followers are showing us how derangement works in real time. Explaining this to our grandkids will be fun.