Re: Fascism, Nationalism, and The Left & Right Strategies
The Dems have been trying to stage a coup for the last three years. If they succeed we're going down under dictatorship and debt. As soon as we get another Democrat in office we can look forward to that anyway.
Notice that police, fire prevention, armed services, public works, etc are ALL socialist programs.
That's quite a stretch, that would have to mean that any country with those services is a socialist country. That would make it hard to distinguish between all the different forms of government around the world.
It's less an argument and more just food for thought. Where does one draw the line between the services government should provide and those that should remain in the private sector. Is public garbage pickup socialism? Public schools? A social safety net? Shelters? Food kitchens? Vehicle emission standards? Clean air requirements? Equal pay for equal work laws (ERA issues)? Minimum wage? Healthcare?
One major difference between conservatives and liberals is that the conservatives list of essential services is much shorter than the liberal. You recently mentioned the cost of healthcare, making it seem like you think it should be a service government is involved in providing in some way or to some degree.
Another of your favorite themes is an overintrusive government. In urban areas water and sewer is provided by the city, but in the country it's provided by each individual home owner. When the government inspects your well and shuts it down because of unsafe arsenic levels, is that an overbearing government or a lifesaving one? You listening, West Virginia? Hope you're happy about your loosened coal industry environmental regulations.
Re: Fascism, Nationalism, and The Left & Right Strategies
quote:The Dems have been trying to stage a coup for the last three years.
No they haven’t.
quote:If they succeed we're going down under dictatorship and debt
And why would that happen under the Democrats rather than Trump who has been working hard on increasing the debt and claiming more power for the executive?
quote:As soon as we get another Democrat in office we can look forward to that anyway
Since you are such a fan of dictatorship and debt, you must be expecting a coup from your fellow Trump supporters.
Re: Fascism, Nationalism, and The Left & Right Strategies
See, that's the kind of rhetoric that fosters divisions.
Coup is defined as "a sudden, violent, and illegal seizure of power from a government". No liberals have been trying to do that or talking about doing that. Talking about carrying out a coup is limited to right-wing militias.
Fascism is defined as "a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition". I suppose that you think liberals espouse that but, as usual, you can't provide any support. Yeah, Reagan did say something exceptionally stupid about fascism. That didn't affect the reality that fascism is right-wing.
Re: Fascism, Nationalism, and The Left & Right Strategies
I have noticed several trends in politics. One of them is that both Democrat and Republican mainstream candidates have all moved farther to the Right. Bernie is about as far left as it gets for those with any public support. And the man is hardly a fascist. From most of what i have studied fascism is more of a nationalist phenomenon rather than a socialist globalist one. On many graphs, communism and fascism...though polar opposites, share some common ground. I can imagine several reasons why a Christian Nationalist fears "The Left" however.
diminished private property and capital rights.
increased taxation and mandatory social responsibility. (Keyword:Mandatory)
diminished exclusivity of Christian exclusivity.
Chance as a real force is a myth. It has no basis in reality and no place in scientific inquiry. For science and philosophy to continue to advance in knowledge, chance must be demythologized once and for all. ~RC Sproul
"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." ~Mark Twain " ~"We, humans, are engaged in an ongoing war of ideologies. I see it in this microcosm of EvC Forum just as I see it in the governments and attitudes of people throughout the world. Take your pick: Oppression or Seduction . "~Thugpreacha
You can "get answers" by watching the ducks. That doesn't mean the answers are coming from them.~Ringo
As the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, so the denial of God is the height of foolishness. ? R.C. Sproul, Essential Truths of the Christian Faith "You may not like it, but the dog bites both ankles."~Tangle
Re: LIBERAL is not a derogatory term, no matter how hard you try ...
Faith writes:
Ya know what, conservatives, perhaps Republicans, are still more liberal than today's Democrats.
Wouldn't that mean that in your upside down bizarro world where liberals are fascists that Republicans are more fascist than Democrats?
In your world, are negative numbers to the right on the number line? Do objects fall up? Is doublethink the primary cognitive framework? Do you need to destroy the village in order to save it? Is knowledge gained by cutting yourself off from information?
All the Democrats spend their time doing is criticizing the opposition, pointing the finger, finding fault, giving no benefit of the doubt or having any other civilized notion.
Shall we play the Twitter game again where I list critical/insulting/attacking Trump tweets and you list those from Democrats in Congress? I'll start:
Inventing reasons to put restrictions on people, create an oppressive tyranny in which they tell the rest of us what to do.
Who is putting restrictions on you and telling you what to do? Please be specific. What restrictions are they putting on you and what are they telling you to do? Please be specific. Please try to avoid being ridiculous or absurd.
Death to our American freedoms.
What American freedoms are being threatened by liberals? Do liberals want to take away the freedom to do what you want with your body? No, that would be the conservatives. The freedom to marry who you please? No, the conservatives again. The freedom to cast votes if you're poor, disadvantaged, or moved and forgot to reregister? No, it's again the conservatives who are threatening that. The freedom to seek a better life in a new land? No, the conservatives again. The freedom to trade freely with other nations? Again, the conservatives.
One freedom liberals would like to place reasonable constraints on is the right to own guns without licensing, registration, training requirements and testing, and on the right to store them unsafely, and on the right to carry them anywhere you want. My state's particularly bad - there are very few gun laws, and none specific to minors.
If the word means anything it means freedom from exactly the kind of tyrannical conformism today's left wants to impose on us all, from social norms to economic opportunities.
What form does this tyranny take? Please be specific. What conformity is being demanded of you. Please be specific. Please try to avoid being ridiculous or absurd.
Trump has brought jobs to the minorities, all the Democrats do is complain and call the opposition names.
Again, please support this claim. Here's another recent Trump tweet, please match it with one from a Democrat. Doesn't have to be a tweet, could be a news item or a short segment of a video (if you provide a video please queue it up to the exact right spot as described in the dBCode help):
Trump has been acting within his constitutional authority at every turn,...
I don't think any president who believes Article II says he can do whatever he wants is likely to be operating within constitutional constraints.
...but the Democrats are either so malicious or so ignorant they accuse him of violating it.
Trump is charged with abuse of power and obstruction of justice, as was Nixon (he resigned before the articles could be voted on). Bill Clinton was also charged with obstruction of justice.
Here is the number of documents and witnesses Trump approved for the impeachment investigation: Zero. That's a first. No other president under impeachment investigation has been so blatantly obstructive.
Probably both malicious and ignorant. This is not a "liberal" party by any sense of the term.
Your derogatory labels are unsupported by any facts and so carry no weight. Bringing facts and rational arguments to discussions is what is important. It is the meat of the discussion that occurs after the initial statements of opinion. An endless series of posts of aspersions and denigrations does not qualify as participation in a discussion, and constantly reminding people of your emotional barometer is numbingly repetitive and unnecessary.
For some reason known only to yourself you've chosen liberalism and Democrats as your bogeyman and conservatism and Republicans as your savior. Both are neither.
Just a minor point. In my view both trickle up and trickle down are real phenomena, but trickle up is far more significant.
Trickle down isn't that significant because even though the rich control a huge proportion of the wealth, there are not that many of them, and they can only buy so many houses, boats and planes, only throw so many parties, only buy so much jewelry and designer clothing.
Trickle up is very significant because wealth is built by creating products and/or services that have broad appeal across the population. You can even make a fortune selling something commonplace like pizza (e.g., John Schnatter, aka Papa John's, recent issues notwithstanding).
So, it appears, you do think that poring toxins into the air is a bad thing. However, you seem to hope that technology will fix it all. Well, I’m a hypocrite who still burns gas in his car. A year from now that won’t be true since there is much better technology and that’s what I will use.
I drive a Prius Prime right now, which can hold about 30 miles of charge, fine for me since almost all my driving is local. I only fill up maybe 5 or 6 times a year, about 7 gallons each time. The engine has to run part of the time in the winter to provide heat.
But my wife's gas-powered car, our trip car, is getting on in years, and sometime this year we plan to trade it in. Right now we're looking at the Tesla Model 3. I'm curious what options you're considering.
I'm waiting (and feeling guilty) for 2 reasons. One is to depreciate my low millage car further and also because at my advanced age I expect my next car is my last and I want a higher seating position for getting in and out of so the Model Y is what I am waiting for.
I've driven all 3 Tesla's so far and 2 other EVs. Several friends and people I know have S's or 3's. They are fabulous to drive!! So while saving the planet is in the list of reasons I'll confess to being influenced by the sportiness. (I have an Audi S4 right now).
Since we have about 20 cm of snow on the ground right now I'll be aiming at the 4WD LR Y next year.
So far there are no reasonable competitors to Tesla (disclosure I have some shares) and besides that I like to support a company whose reason for existing isn't just to "do no evil" but actually to try to help save the planet (unlike VW that I have now ).
Re: LIBERAL is not a derogatory term, no matter how hard you try ...
All the Democrats spend their time doing is criticizing the opposition, pointing the finger, finding fault, giving no benefit of the doubt or having any other civilized notion. Inventing reasons to put restrictions on people, create an oppressive tyranny in which they tell the rest of us what to do.
You forgot to mention the over 400 bills the Democratic House has passed but the Republican Senate has ignored. Too busy packing the courts with unqualified but ideologically correct judges to do any governing.
(Yes, Republicans don't like some of the bills. In a functioning government the House and Senate would try to work out some acceptable to both sides.)
Your tyranny fantasy is too ridiculous to require reply.
We were looking at a Volt, but passed for heat reasons. In our environment too much battery power will be spent heating the car. Electric cars are terrible at providing a comfortable experience when it is below zero. When range gets better and the percentage hit on the mileage is not as great we may consider electric.
Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts
"God did it" is not an argument. It is an excuse for intellectual laziness.
If your viewpoint has merits and facts to back it up why would you have to lie?
Trickle down isn't that significant because even though the rich control a huge proportion of the wealth, there are not that many of them, and they can only buy so many houses, boats and planes, only throw so many parties, only buy so much jewelry and designer clothing.
Trickle down isn't that significant because even though the rich control a huge proportion of the wealth, there are not that many of them, and they can only buy so many houses, boats and planes, only throw so many parties, only buy so much jewelry and designer clothing.
What I've been saying for a long time. I even posted about it back on 02 August 2019 in Message 3175.
To summarize that message, what I heard in the lead-up to the Trump Tax Scam was that it would give the top 1% and 2% about $33,000 each. That amount of extra income would be a drop in the bucket for them and, since all their needs and luxuries have already been paid for with plenty left over, that extra $33,000 each would most likely never get spent and hence would never find its way into the economy.
Then I figured that the total amount the top 1-2%'ers would get comes out to be billions of dollars. Billions of dollars being kept out of the economy. To paraphrase from Hello, Dolly!, that money is like manure; it needs to be spread around for the economy to grow.
Then I took those same billions of dollars and distributed it equally to everybody in the population (not just to the 98%'ers) and it came to about $300 per person. The difference that would make is that an extra $300 per year is meaningful for the vast majority of the population. Then I discussed why:
DWise1 writes:
The difference is that while the rich would not spend their $33,000, thus keeping it out of the economy, the rest of us would most definitely spend our $300 on food, bills, durable goods, etc, sending those billions of dollars straight into the economy. With all that money entering the economy, stores could stay open and hire people, new stores and businesses could open and hire people, manufacturers would have more customers for their products and be able to expand and hire more workers, and so on.
Giving money to the rich starves the economy. Getting money into the hands of the middle class and the poor feeds and invigorates the economy.
One possible thing that a rich person would do with his $33,000 would be to gamble with it; i.e., to "invest" it in the stock market through speculative trading. While the stock market is a way for companies to raise capital in order to grow their business and hence the economy, once those stocks have been issued then they just get traded back and forth adding essentially nothing more to the economy. But then speculative trading adds far less since it's little more than placing bets on how certain markets will do. Instead of generating new wealth as capitalism is supposed to do (and does when it's working right), speculative trading only redistributes existing wealth, like a casino or a back-alley crap game. Basically, that would be a prime place for the rich's $33,000 to go, adding nothing to the economy.
An example was given in a really good movie, The Big Short, which chronicles and explains the collapse of the housing market and the world economy in 2008. To help explain the concepts, the film cuts to celebrities offering analogies, like Richard H. Thaler, PhD, and Selena Gomez explaining synthetic CDOs as being side bets being made on Selena's blackjack hand and then side bets on those side bets, etc -- you end up with more money riding on the side bets than on the original bet. That part starts around the 3:00 mark, but you should go back to at least the 2:00 mark to get more background information. This scene is Mark Baum talking with a CDO manager -- a CDO is collateralized debt obligation in which risk is supposedly minimized by bundling lots of mortgages together such that the entire bundle gets a AAA rating even though it's filled with a lot of sub-prime shit (the word Margo Robbie from her bubble bath advises us to think every time we hear "sub-prime"). For an explanation of CDO, refer to the clip at No webpage found at provided URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ho8y6Xg3SM -- note that there are no women in the scene, but then at 5:05 it's a woman's voice representing us, the audience, saying, "Say that again."
Dr. Thaler and Selena Gomez in Vegas explaining synthetic CDOs (again, at 3:00, but I recommend starting at 2:00):
$50 million in a CDO would translate to about a billion in synthetic CDOs (at about 2:40, which is why I recommend starting at 2:00 and preferably even earlier (so that you can catch the bit about creating CDOs of CDOs or "CDOs squared")).
IOW, a helluva lot of money being shuffled back and forth with practically none of it entering the economy. The stock market is going great guns while the economy is stagnant from being starved. That's the bottom line of trickle-down.
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