Is America great now?

[Jaguar]

We should make all our decisions around what Trump says, lol.

Run away from the topic. Run now!

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

Run away from the topic. Run now!

You've run away from my counterarguments so many times I think it's pretty clear from reading this who actually has a leg to stand on.

 

[Virtual ghost]

I don't agree, I guess. I've seen a large chunk of the country openly label themselves as being fascist (through opposing "antifa"). I don't think the labels are as important as "conventional wisdom" would dictate.

I don't think left forces were strong enough in this country to successfully challenge the DNC, although they got closer than in 2016. I think that will come at some point.

Is it truly the case that it is ok in the U.S. for people to openly run around identifying themselves as fascists, but it's not ok for socialists to do that? If that were so, Bernie would have not done as well as he did.

Labels are fundamentally just expression of the general panic mode that is all over the nation. This is why for me seem smart to ignore that game and clearly present something of value.
Bernie did well, but obviously not well enough. What wasn't set in the stone in my book, but some of the approaches were simply bad. It is a shame and that is kinda the point, what massive misses shouldn't happen again.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

Labels are fundamentally just the expression of the general panic mode that is all over the nation. This is why for me seem smart to ignore that game and clearly present something of value.
Bernie did well, but obviously not well enough. What wasn't set in the stone in my book, but some of the approaches were simply bad. It is a shame and that is kinda the point, what massive misses shouldn't happen again.

Well, like I said.... I think he's the beginning and not the end of something. We'll see what happens next.

 

[Siúil a Rúin]

Let's just bail out the whole fucking world. Peace. Love. Dope. Any other shit you want to focus on from the past, put it in a memo.

Just the other day I said exactly this. "If I were Jeff Bezos for one day, I'd just pay everyone's rent, so 6 million wouldn't be homeless in the middle of this winter. I would spend the whole day giving his money away. Why doesn't he do this? That would be more fun than a triple scoop ice cream cone? Rich people have no idea how to have real fun."

 

[Jaguar]

You've run away from my counterarguments so many times I think it's pretty clear from reading this who actually has a leg to stand on.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

Haha... is it wrong that I like that GIF? I mean, I could see my cat doing that.

 

[Lark]

Someone like Trump is not exclusive to any particular form of government; there always have been and always shall be would be exploitative authoritarians lurking in the wings ready to heh "capitalize" on any situation where there is power or profit to be made; throwing the rest of their country under the bus, that's just the cost of doing business... Trump has not been alone in his "presidency". He's surrounded by smiling ghouls on both sides who seemingly neither checked nor balanced him...

Yeah, this is true, the "great man" of "singular individual" theory of history seems absurd in the abstract but lots of people do think this way in practice.

There used to be a great pamphlet called "Stalin didnt fall from the sky" which was about how a lot of dumb valourising or idealising of Lenin used to take place when he prepared the ground for Stalin a lot, its the same sort of thing, its much bigger than individuals, paying attention to the personalities is usually a diversion from the teams and groups and factions working away quietly unnoticed.

 

[Lark]

You've run away from my counterarguments so many times I think it's pretty clear from reading this who actually has a leg to stand on.

He'll put you on ignore for good soon too.

Jag is one of those funny characters on the forum, observing him for the longest time it seems that he doesnt really visit or post for interaction with others at all.

Its got that kind of blog quality, a bit like Mole, although the content is pretty different the form or style is pretty similar. I've wondered if its got to do with age, demographic, the time or way they started to use the internet etc.

 

[Virtual ghost]

Also a while back it was said to me that US doesn't have socio-economic council. What is a place that matters on the long run in setting a general social climate. In other words this is the place where high representatives of the government, heads of the unions and top people from the union of employers come to talk about what is reasonable and possible in the country. On the average day they don't agree much but in the end something still gets done as some kind of a compromise. What are the results that pile over time. What then helps with easing the tensions and lowering the amount or scale of the protests.

 

[Mole]

The danger for the world is the collapse the Reserve Currency of the World, the USA dollar.

As the Reserve Currency collapses the standard of living in the USA will fall precipitately, and this in a country awash with guns. And as a result the USA will reach for the gun, and the biggest gun is the USA military, the most powerful military in the world.

As the Reserve Currency of the World, the US dollar, collapses the USA will have no alternative but to go to war.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

He'll put you on ignore for good soon too.

It seems to be the current trajectory, yes.

Jag is one of those funny characters on the forum, observing him for the longest time it seems that he doesnt really visit or post for interaction with others at all.

Its got that kind of blog quality, a bit like Mole, although the content is pretty different the form or style is pretty similar. I've wondered if its got to do with age, demographic, the time or way they started to use the internet etc.

Maybe they view it more like writing a book and as a consequence don't expect a change? That would be ironic for [MENTION=3325]Mole[/MENTION], though, given how the change from the individual printed word to the tribal electronic screen is one of his favorite topics.

 

[ceecee]

Nope.

 

[Firebird 8118]

In my opinion, America was never great - or perhaps it used to be great, but it lost that greatness the moment colonists killed off and pushed out the Natives, the moment they decided that Black people had no rights as equals and were brought in as slaves, the moment they decided that only rich white straight cisgender Anglo-Saxon men could have access to the highest positions in the workplace and government, along with access to the best healthcare and education.

We may have come a long way in improving conditions for minorities, but this is still just the beginning.

 

[Stigmata]

Nope.

Came here to post this, actually. The length at which Republicans will go to coddle the fragile ego of Donald Trump while courting his base in the process is unreal. In 2016 I knew we were in for a wild ride but never in a million years would I have seen this coming. What comes next, the Texit movement?

 

[Lark]

The danger for the world is the collapse the Reserve Currency of the World, the USA dollar.

As the Reserve Currency collapses the standard of living in the USA will fall precipitately, and this in a country awash with guns. And as a result the USA will reach for the gun, and the biggest gun is the USA military, the most powerful military in the world.

As the Reserve Currency of the World, the US dollar, collapses the USA will have no alternative but to go to war.

There is a school of thought that part of what precipitated the war in the Gulf, the first one against Saddam, included his threat to abandon trading oil in US Petro-Dollars and instead begin using the Euro instead.

Though there's been a lot of things that happened in that region, such as the bombing by US forces of a proposed route for pipe lines which cut the costs for the energy corporation planning to build it in half or more, it was not particularly sinister for this to have happened but it was a pretty clear example of when private interests where all working in a collaborative fashion with a pretext of war to make money and dominate the supply of natural resources.

 

[Lark]

It seems to be the current trajectory, yes.



Maybe they view it more like writing a book and as a consequence don't expect a change? That would be ironic for [MENTION=3325]Mole[/MENTION], though, given how the change from the individual printed word to the tribal electronic screen is one of his favorite topics.

Its interesting how a badly misinterpreted reading of Marshall McLuhan can go.

 

[Lark]

Came here to post this, actually. The length at which Republicans will go to coddle the fragile ego of Donald Trump while courting his base in the process is unreal. In 2016 I knew we were in for a wild ride but never in a million years would I have seen this coming. What comes next, the Texit movement?

Well, it might be Trump but the whole "unlawful and tyrannical government" schtick has been around for a much longer time than Trumps time in office, its a real staple of the militia movement and featured prominently in the thinking back at the time of the Ocklahoma bombing.

The idea being that you can run massive military expenditures and levy taxes to serve that but in contrast much smaller benefits revenues paid for by taxation renders any government automatically criminal. Its a lot of balls which arises from poorly understood readings of some very old, very fetishised historical documents.

I blame the education system in the US which excludes most people form higher learning, has a lot of people opting out of it altogether to home school and also norms such as solo scripture and scriptural literalism can have really negative results in shaping the thinking and expectations of large sections of the population too.

So, its not "just" Trump, not by a long shot, although a lot of the fringe groups, free market fascists, KKK currents, I'm sure can not believe that they've seemingly caught the attention and sympathies of a big money personality like Trump. Plus the secessionists in the US, some would have you believe, never really went away. Its all in the far right stew pot anyway but the whole "outlaw government" is nothing new. A close idea is the whole "Zionist Occupation Government" or ZOG, which I'm pretty sure the family at the Ruby Ridge siege may have begun to believe in, they're both conspiracy theories which largely benefit big, old money but have a lot of support, oddly, with stoney broke rural types.

 

[Lark]

In my opinion, America was never great - or perhaps it used to be great, but it lost that greatness the moment colonists killed off and pushed out the Natives, the moment they decided that Black people had no rights as equals and were brought in as slaves, the moment they decided that only rich white straight cisgender Anglo-Saxon men could have access to the highest positions in the workplace and government, along with access to the best healthcare and education.

We may have come a long way in improving conditions for minorities, but this is still just the beginning.

I was with you until you got into the whole rich white straight cisgender stuff, that's a lot of garbled nonsense, Obama held office until the term limit was reached.

I also have no idea at all what relevance someones sexual orientation or attitudes to gender should have when it comes to the holding of office, those are, relatively speaking, gross minorities within the population, the deserve legal protection and do not deserve vilification as in the past (and sometimes the present), however, that representatives might resemble the majority more than select minorities, really does not surprise me at all, and its no injury or persecution to anyone per se that this should be so.

I'm waiting for the day that heterosexual candidates with opposite sex partners and traditional families will be considered discriminatory per se some how. I've already seen a shocking uptick in pretty neurotic behaviour among some friends who are closely aligned with the "pseudo-left" in their thinking, like they can not or will not post pictures of themselves with loved ones or their children on social media as they can not represent the alphabet soup constituency by doing so. That a full spectrum tolerance or multi-cultural society should be inclusive not only of minorities but also they themselves and the norms they abide by without a second thought isnt something that's really occurred to them. I find it really unfortunate as there is definitely a component who, when their best efforts to conform to the expectations of a community that is ambivalent about their even "belonging" fail there generally are some creepy far right elements happy to offer them a "new home" and tell them how the entire project they'd once valued was one colossal head fuck and monkey wrenching exercise anyway.

 

[ceecee]

Came here to post this, actually. The length at which Republicans will go to coddle the fragile ego of Donald Trump while courting his base in the process is unreal. In 2016 I knew we were in for a wild ride but never in a million years would I have seen this coming. What comes next, the Texit movement?

Granted much of this predates Trump but this is what the current issue comes down to - The GOP created this monster and allowed it to take over and now they don't know how to stop it. Frankly too many of their voters believe this insanity and now the GOP can't not run with the Trumptardation and that's going to be the case for some time going forward.

I would be fine calling their bluff at this point.