On American Appeasement

Discussion in 'Politics' started by Tiassa, Apr 29, 2017.

  1. parmalee peripatetic artisan Valued Senior Member

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    Try making sense.
     
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  3. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Maybe. If you deal with the race and gender matters that have blocked it so far.
    If you are trying to argue that race is not significant in US health care, you could pick a safer example than the intransigent white male opposition to everything Obama attempted.
     
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  5. Bells Staff Member

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    Wow, talk about obscene misinterpretation of data.

    You fail to account for the fact that white people outnumber minorities by a huge margin. Which makes the percentage of white people who are poor compared to minorities, much less in comparison, if you take the population of all groups into account.

    You also fail to take into account one important thing:

    To take but two examples: Black household income stood at only 55 percent of white household income in 2011, an even smaller share than 1999’s 63 percent. Black unemployment in August 2012 ran twice white unemployment, 14.1 to 7.2 percent.

    Black people currently make up about 13.8 percent of the U.S. population, and about 27 percent of these Americans fall below the poverty line. The population overall rates as about 15 percent poor. So black people in the United States face nearly twice the risk of living in poverty as average Americans.

    This elevated risk reflects past and current institutional practices that put blacks and other minorities at a disadvantage. But it’s also true that almost three-quarters of black incomes do not fall below the poverty line. Collapsing poor and black as if all poor were black and all blacks poor turns the “poverty” problem into a “race” problem.

    The white poverty rate does run much lower than the black rate, just under 10 percent, one-third of the black rate. But the white poor outnumber the black poor considerably, 19 to 7.8 million. White people make up 42 percent of America’s poor, black people about 28 percent.

    The basic numbers don’t change when we look at people living in extreme poverty, in households making less than 50 percent of the meager poverty line. Of the 20 million people who live at this alarming level of want and deprivation, about 42 percent are white, 27 percent black.


    If the population of black people were near that of white people in the US, then the figures would be insane.

    Saying that more whites are in poverty than black people is correct, but you completely and utterly fail to acknowledge the difference in population for both groups. Understand now?

    It is expected that the figures for poor white people would be greater than that of poor minorities. Simply because white people outnumber black people nearly 3 to 1. So overall, the average of white people, per population size, who live in poverty comes down to around 10%. Blacks who live in poverty 24%.. Now do you understand the discrepancy and the issue of discrimination? Percentage wise, by which if one looks at the populations of each group, black people are twice as likely to be living in poverty as opposed to white people..

    Which is why comments such as this:

    "So black people in the United States face nearly twice the risk of living in poverty as average Americans."


    Point to the problem of poverty and discrimination in the US. Which is backed up by the numbers from various sources.

    There is no "basic income" if people are unemployed.

    If people are earning $0 and are living in the street, harping on about raising "basic income" means diddly squat.

    You literally do not understand what has been presented to you, do you? Or are you so set on pushing Republican and alt right talking points that you choose to simply ignore all the studies completed on these subjects?

    Free healthcare will not help homeless men who suffer mental illness who became homeless because they refused to seek help for their mental illness. Veterans who suffer from mental illness after returning home from war, are not seeking the help that is available. What? You think just giving them money will make it all better?

    Most of these people left their homes and families to live on the street for reasons already cited. Most of these people already had money and left it behind, because of their mental illness.

    Doesn't it strike you as interesting that Utah is a predominately white state, and astonishingly enough, where white people are seen to live on the streets in a predominately white state, the State Government and organisations there suddenly do something about it?

    I mean, that completely escaped your notice?

    According to 2010 United States Census projections, the racial and ethnic makeup of Utah are as it follows. :


    This is why Utah did something about homelessness in their State.

    And you also need to consider how Utah 'fixed' homelessness in their State..

    The figure you are quoting me for is for something completely different.

    Why are you misrepresenting what I posted and attributing it to something else?

    The actual percentage of whites who are poor is 10% or so. Blacks is around 24%. Hispanics around the same as blacks.

    This has already been posted. What part of that didn't you understand?
     
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  7. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    That is my whole fucking point from the very beginning! They are the majority of the population and a plurality of the poor, whom you and your ilk choose to ignore and proclaim privileged, so then they turn around and vote trump.


    Yeah, and? so? Would not the black poor benefit from free healthcare, free education, debt relief, a basic income? And look at that such programs would disproportionately help the minorities and yet still be attractive to all the poor white voters, what is the problem? Oh that right you want to find the "systemic racism" that needs to be top priority, you will fix it by bitching about it apparently.

    Sure there is, imagine a future where machines make everything, no one will be employed, they will get paid simply for being. When we tax highly automated industries like high-frequency trading, we are having the machines literally do the work for people.

    Basic income guarantee is an alt-right talking point?

    Well at least we will give them a home and food, I guess sure they can reject that as well, but certainly we would help a majority of them.

    and? so? Sounds like some victim blaming here. How do we get them back off the streets? Give them homes. Oh sure not all of them will take it, why from the Utuh experiment ~90% took it, and sure it does not solve all their problems, but it is a big fix that can be implemented. What is your solution?

    In the same way as a strikes me how many jews there are in Hollywood, banks, higher government, sciences, huuum it must be because we are all orchestrating it for each other, lifting each other up with a Jew hand-shack and a secret Jew code and keeping out everyone else, evil conniving Jews right?

    Back to Utah, aaah yes now I see, the whites only look out for white people, evil conniving whites, so that why they did something about poverty, I wonder if any of those homeless they gave homes to where not white?

    Anyways I don't see how this changes my argument: if you want to get white people to care and vote for social justice issues, you need to get them in the door with the economic issues that affect them. If you tell white people that a plurality of the poor are white, then in their evil racists hearts, that pumps oil not blood by the way, they will decide to help the poor, of which a majority are minorities.

    Meh. Do you still deny my 41% figure... oh now it is 42.38%

    Again that per each demographic, what is the percentage out of the total population, you know: humans for humans?

    Anyways I'm really enjoying listening to this trumpette, here snarky uptalk and vocal fry coupled with her wit and perspicacity, just a joy:

     
    Last edited: May 5, 2017
  8. Bells Staff Member

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    24,270
    Your point from the very beginning amounts to ignoring discrimination and inequality because attempting to address discrimination and inequality, perpetuates the myth that somehow or other, the majority, the whites, are losing rights or are being ignored.

    In effect, you have been arguing for around 6 pages now, that women, minorities, LGBT, etc, should not expect or even demand an end to discrimination and inequality, because they are making the majority white male population antsy for the mistaken belief that an end to discrimination and inequality somehow amounts to a loss of rights for the majority.

    I need to ask..

    How and when did the mere thought of ending inequality and discrimination suddenly become or amounted to ignoring white people?

    Because from the manner you argue, you seem to believe that even the expectation of equality and an end to discrimination, somehow or other makes white people disadvantaged because you seem to believe that tackling issues like discrimination and inequality means ignoring white people.. And then you whine at the mere thought of privilege?

    You don't see the irony?

    You don't understand how it is discrimination that makes them twice as likely to live in poverty?

    Or is it the fact that you simply do not care?

    Just so long as the status of white people in America remains paramount, huh?

    They would not benefit from any of it, EF.

    The reason being that discrimination and inequality would ensure that they do not benefit from any of it. What part of that don't you understand?

    Ending discrimination and inequality would allow them to benefit from it. Failing to tackle discrimination and inequality would only ensure that minorities and women will not benefit from any of it. Is that what you prefer?

    You mean the white voters who openly vote against any policy change that would benefit them?

    Do you know why they vote against policies or against the party that would actually benefit them? Because it would mean that those same policies would be helping minorities and women.

    And you think just giving money to all would somehow or other draw those white people back?

    They voted for Trump, because the mere thought of equality in the distribution of wealth or "income", healthcare, education, benefited minorities too much.

    They vote to support the racial status quo.. to maintain the racial divide.

    Systemic racism is the reason why any attempt to reform the economy will fail. The reason being that poor white people will actively vote against such reforms because they think that blacks and other minorities would also benefit.

    Wow..

    Just.. wow..

    You don't understand homelessness, do you?

    One of the biggest underlying problems of homelessness is mental health. And one of the biggest setbacks of mental health is the refusal to seek help.

    Giving them a home and food is not going to help them. Failure to tackle the cause of an issue just means the issue will continue to be an issue.

    If you wish to tackle homelessness, then you need to tackle how society views homelessness.

    First, you need to look at the cause of homelessness.. That would mean having to 'fix' the mental health issue that often results in people leaving their homes and families to live out on the streets, you need to tackle issues of discrimination, where often, LGBT kids, for example, are kicked out of home for being LGBT and where minorities, for example, are denied housing or affordable housing because of their ethnicity. It would entail tackling domestic violence issues, which sees many women and their children having to live on the streets.

    Just throwing money at the problem is not going to fix the problem. It would require community outreach programs, education, health funding, tackling employment and tackling discrimination against them.

    You would also need to tackle the causes of poverty, which would also mean having to tackle discrimination and inequality. You would need to educate males in the military, for example, about seeking help, providing free counseling for returning soldiers to help pick up psychological and psychiatric issues. It would also entail fighting for equality in the workforce, ensuring that women, minorities and LGBT, for example, are not continually excluded from the workforce, which has the added effect on their ability to access housing, education, health care.

    Again, failure to tackle the cause of the problem, will only ensure that the problem does not go away.

    Just giving people money is not going to fix the problem.

    Again.. Wow..

    You just get worse and worse, don't you?

    What Utah did, was good. But ask yourself, why haven't States with large minority populations done anything even remotely similar?
     
  9. Bells Staff Member

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    Because as the last election clearly showed, even poor white people, those living below the poverty line, voted against their own best interest because of the thought that the Democrats would allow minorities to attain equal rights and access to things like welfare, health, education..

    Put simply:

    But to discuss socioeconomic class as a single defining issue — as Sanders does — is to gravely underestimate how intersecting forms of oppression work. Social class and income have an enormous impact on a person’s quality of life, but changing them won’t magically erase other forms of marginalization. In fact, in many instances, marginalization unrelated to class or income is what leads people to live in poverty. As Ta Nehisi Coates outlines in his brilliant essay “The Case for Reparations,” it is anti-Black legislation in America that has largely been responsible for the economic suppression of Black people. Taking on Wall Street may do a lot to alleviate some of the stressors in people’s lives, but that action alone won’t end social ills like racism.

    Speaking of racism, I wish that Sanders would be less disingenuous about what exactly Trump’s campaign “tapped into” with rural white voters. Trump’s economic pitch to voters was largely predicated on racism — on lies about how immigrants and refugees and racial others have threatened the livelihood of white people. If he tapped into any anger, it was the anger of white people who feel that social progress has stolen something from them.

    For them, civil rights is an equation that presents the gains of Black and Brown Americans as their loss. Now Donald Trump has given them a language to articulate that equation, and a forum in which to vent their fury over it. The phrasing of Trump’s slogan is important in this context: He doesn’t just say that he will make America great, but rather make America great again — promising white people the return to a time of post-war prosperity, a time whose economics depended heavily on disenfranchising people of color in order to benefit white people.

    While it’s tempting to take the view that Sanders does — namely that the Democratic Party lost the white rural vote — a more accurate way of looking at it would be that Trump won the white rural vote by running on a platform of white nationalism.

    So why in the hell do you think the Democrats should shift more to pander to this kind of ideology, at the expense of minorities who will suffer more, even with the kind of welfare reform you idiolise?

    By failing to address the issues of inequality and discrimination, you are demanding a continuation of the status quo, of people knowing their place. And that is why poor whites voted for Trump, against their own self interest. They believe that welfare, better access to education and health, for example, should not be going to minorities or women. You want an example of that?

    In Ohio, white working-class focus group participants decried that women who “pop out babies like Pez dispensers with different baby daddies” get “welfare every month” and “their housing paid for, their food.” These women seem to live large, one participant said, while people like herself are “struggling to put food on the table.”

    Participants in this focus group, held by the Institute for Family Studies, were also skeptical of efforts to raise the minimum wage.

    [...]

    More broadly, a recent YouGov/Huffington Post survey found that Trump voters are five times more likely to believe that “average Americans” have gotten less than they deserve in recent years than to believe that “blacks” have gotten less than they deserve. (African Americans don’t count as “average Americans,” apparently.)


    This was in response to the Democrats running on a platform of increasing the minimum wage, better access to health care, education.. Poor whites voted overwhelmingly against it, because minorities would have equal access to it. They think that equal somehow means a loss of their rights. They believe that minorities would get more and somehow overtake them, despite the fact that would not happen. They do not equate equal distribution of wealth as being equal. Bigotry on this scale entails the belief that any going to minorities, for example, would mean that they are losing out, that they are being denied their rights and that others are getting more.

    Until you address the issue of discrimination, you will never ever win an election on a platform of economic reform that is based on a more equal distribution of wealth. White voters will never support it, even if they stand to gain the most from it, because it has the risk of elevating minorities to the same level as them.

    This is what we are seeing with "white working class" Trump voters. They hope that by voting against justice—by denying the urgency of racial equity in education and health care and housing and employment needed to shatter the framework of a country built on the subjugation and murders of black, Latinx and indigenous people—that they will be more closely aligned with the wealthy white people they yearn to be. They hope that by deporting immigrants from this country—something that Democrats know a thing or two about as well—they won't have to face job competition and their own mediocrity.

    They don't care that more white people, in need of health care, are dying from "despair"—suicides, alcohol diseases and drug overdoses—because they are being crushed in the rubble of the burning house they wanted to remain whites-only.

    This is why what you espouse will never work if you fail to tackle discrimination and inequality.

    You still going to keep misrepresenting what that data actually says?

    The more you keep pandering to discrimination and bigotry, the less you are likely to win and succeed.
     
  10. wellwisher Banned Banned

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    5,160
    The Constitution provides for equal rights for all. tWe all have equal rights, which means we all play by the same set of laws and rules. However, since we all have different abilities, skills and levels of drive, the results will not be the same for all. What the left assumes is, equal rights means is equal results for all. The problem with equal rights, meaning equal results, is this will require different rules for different people to compensate for the differences. Different rules do not allow equal rights and protections, and is therefore unconstitutional. The quota system did not offer equal protection for all, but resulted in reverse discrimination by law.

    As an example, say we are all playing a team sport. Both teams and all the players have to play by the same set of rules. Nobody is allowed to double dribble or travel; basketball. Since some players and some teams have more skills, the result is not every game and will rarely end in a tie with all the players scoring the same number of points. That is how equal rights works. It is up the players and team to work harder and learn new skills to alter the results of the games.

    What the left wants is each game to end in a tie, with everyone scoring the same number of points; everyone wins a trophy To do this you will need to have more than one set of rules. Some of the rules will need to handcuff the best players, while other rules will allow the worse players to cheat, if that is what it takes to get to the equal results. This is not equal protection under the law.

    Poor whites males like to watch and play sports. What they see is everyone playing by one set of rules. If you cheat or break the rules there is a penalty that can impact that players and the team. In sports, you have to compete with everyone else, using one set of rules with skills and hard work the deciding factors. They are not asking for a rule change that allows the bottom teams to win. They believer in equal rights relative to the pursuit of happiness. They are not looking to shackle one group, with one set of laws, while they have a different set of laws. That is not equal rights. Shackle is a democratic party trademark.

    The left needs to lean from sports what equal rights for all means. This poor whites will cheer any player of any color on their home team and will respect any team and best players from any team. In sports, blacks do very well in terms of percent of professional players relative to population. This is all based on skills and hard work with one set of rules for all. The poor whites are good with that. They are not the ones saying we need to change the rules so sports teams reflect population ratios.

    The US is/was a melting pot composed of many races; one team and a common culture. The left has sabotaged the melting time pot, with the notion of diversity, where different ethnicities and races get to regress backwards to create different sub-cultures, instead of a common culture.

    Some of these sub-cultures make it harder for its members to compete in the first world, since these culture are common to poor areas of the world. For example, say you were from the ghetto and survival required you be a gang member. You are also smart and have an opportunity to go to an Ivy league school. You take the opportunity but you are told by the left to treasure your diversity; first, be proud to be a gang banger from the ghetto, instead of learning to be more high browed. This will make it harder to compete in the Ivy league as the semesters pass, since the other students are thinking, planning with a different attitude, more conducive to the board room than the bar room. The Democrats create problems, which then fail, they then blame others and then offer solutions that will make the problem worse.

    One set of rules works easier, if all are playing the same sport; same culture. Basketball players have a common culture no matter where they come from. You can be male or female, tall or short, black or white, rich or poor. They all agree to play by the same rules and all work hard so they can play better. It is called sports, not war. That requires sportsmanship, which is lacking on the left.
     
  11. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    Bells... that a wall of text I will reply when I feel like it.

    Not all the left assume that.

    How about we have blind resumes where all potential employees put their resume in a universal system run by the goverment that then distributes those resumes to all companies looking for employees, the goverment tracks who gets hired for what pay for what qualification, and thus if any companies are racists or sexist that can be determined without the need for a quota? Such a system would also make it harder to hire illegal immigrants.

    Also what about people that have no skills or abilities but happen to be born rich and merely sit on assets that grow with interests and dividends? Why should someone with nothing work their ass off just to remain in debt while another person does nothing to live in luxury? I'm fine with some people achieving fame and fortune through their own talents abilities and hard work, but I am not fine with the lazy spoiled rich, whom should be taxed heavily to provide a social safety net for the underpaid hard-workers and innovators that are trying new risky things.
     
  12. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    (Insert Title Here) | Part the First

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    Click to burn, watch it burn.

    Tell us: Do you think you're original or somehow innovative in that?

    What are you going to do when the Blue Dogs you help get elected by tempering liberal expectation back out on wage equality?

    Wage equality falls under what your conservative sympathies describe as "identity politics". By adopting a right-wing narrative, you have virtually cut yourself off from an economic justice platform. Your hint of a whiff of a shadow of a sketch of a plan is pretty stupid and insulting.

    For instance, when the GOP sends out Marsha Blackburn to argue that women resent wage equality under law, what makes you think this argument will be any less effective than it has been? Because as soon as she says that, we're in an identity politics dispute. You know, according to conservatives.

    You don't have a plan. Your policy sketch setup is subordinate to your real purpose, which is anti-identification:

    JARA: Just Another Republican Argument.

    You do realize that your best context approaching utility in these discussions is your caricaturization of conservatives? How will you institute and enforce wage equality? Well, you don't know, which, to the one is perfectly human; to the other, though, you offer up a steaming heap of right-wing excrement. And the thing here is that nobody believes your posturing as some sort of Democrat or liberal. Your demonstrated inability to comprehend and communicatae liberal political theses is only reinforced by your utter failure to recognize the inherent pitfalls.

    • How do you intend to "win back the government on a economic first platform" while trying to reserve particular issues affecting the lives of a majority of your voting base—and, beyond party, a majority of the society—for later?

    • When you finally get around to the part where "they will then vote on bills for wage equality", one of the first bills up is to erase discrimination from salary history. Your economic justice platform just ran into identity politics asserting a socialist takeover of the private sector by capping worker earning potential. And remember, even if the bill doesn't actually do that, you still must answer the argument, because historically the subgroup of the population you wish to court traditionally breaks conservative. That is to say, when Marsha Blackburn argues that women are insulted by wage equality under law, and some other Republican complains that women are hurting men by disrupting salary history, how are you going to hang onto those "straight cis white men"↗ who are "hurting" when they decide the job and raise you're getting them just isn't enough because of those nasty women wrecking up salary history and capping worker earning potential?​

    Because, really, the Supreme Court isn't going to overturn the Ninth, this time. That is, borrowing from Mr. Verrilli: This Supreme Court, Your Honor?

    And wage history effects of prior discrimination is an issue we need to address; it does, after all, affect a majority of the population, disrupting and diminishing their access to the intended economic justice.

    At this point, your (ahem!) plan↑ would seem↑ to add up to straightforward, open class warfare—

    "we focus on a tax the rich to finance social welfare, we win on that, we tax the rich improving everyone standard of living. Straight forward and simple..."

    —while avoiding some vague conservative assertion of identity politics—

    "By first having democrats and specifically progressive democrats win back the government on a economic first platform, they will then vote on bills for wage equality and what ever systemic discrimination you imagine, but if your candidate whining about "systemic wage discrimination" to begin with, well then they lose, we get nothing and you get nothing."

    —in an attempt to defraud "straight cis white men"↗, among others—

    "So If they got voted in on aganda X and instead do A,B,C.. then why can't we?"

    —sufficient to create a Democratic governing majority that, by necessity of its open class warfare—itself requiring identity politics—immediately engages what you would otherwise denounce.

    And in the great tradition of "both sides" equivocation, I just don't see how betraying that bloc of voters you're so worried about is going to work. More directly: Compared to history, how do you expect it to go when we try to sway these "straight cis white men" you're so worried about by excluding others from our pitch to equality and justice, Republicans respond with panicked rhetoric about identity politics, and the first thing we do is settle wage equality?

    You think that bill is getting through?

    Insensate and conservative is no good way to stumble through life. Look at your prescription. Not only is it so vague as to be meaningless, you're aiming for Democrats to exploit the victim bloc you're advocating by pandering to them and then explicitly betraying that pandering. You're so caught up in your right-wing narrative you can't even begin to account for the operating reality that will face your anemic joke of a hint of a whiff of a shadow of a sketch of a plan.

    It's almost like you want Democrats to set up the complaint that "both sides" do it.

    Look, dude, you can keep on with the right-wing myth requiring "straight cis white men" to pretend they're defenseless cucks, but your continued demonstration of ignorance about actual liberal political theory, as well as apparent utter cluelessness about history, pretty much make the point. You got yourself into this to complain about women, and now you can't figure out how to dig yourself out.

    One thing I do find interesting is that your appeal would also suggest that these voters, and not just the "straight cis white men", but, say, the Rust Belt white, working class bloc so many are focusing on in their electoral analyses, and, apparently, many conservatives nationwide, are so disgruntled because they successfully staved off a bunch of liberal principles.

    I came up in the latter part of the Cold War. Basic income? Housing guarantees? Wasn't happening. In fact, housing guarantees were part of the argument against "liberal"—then a pejorative accusing "communist" and therefore inherently "evil"—politics based on projections of tenement living, some of which actually had at least some manner of precedent in reality. In the eighties, Democrats went through a particular marketplace fight; we might say that Jesse Jackson won on points, but Bill Clinton and the DLC won on votes. Where do you think white, working-class Democratic voters in the Rust Belt landed in that spectrum? And, remember, this was a time when the U.S. was esssentially de-unionizing. You know that bit about how real wages have been flat at best over the long term? Yeah, that's how it happened. Couldn't have done that without the white working class in the Rust Belt. Right to work laws? They're not conspiracies of business elites and minority laborers. Free trade agreements? Read the votes: Bush, Sr., started it NAFTA, Clinton finished it; voters could have backed anti-NAFTA candidates.

    ―End Part I―
     
  13. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    Part the Second

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    Click to watch it all break down.

    Liberals in general have never liked the DLC rightward roll, but there are market calculations behind it, and, yes, these voters you are focusing on, and their predecessors in history, are and have been influential in the marketplace results driving such political calculations. Learn the lessons of the Blue Dogs; there's a reason why the coalition is growing again. Appeasement is always a temptation but what about the last quarter-century suggests trembling silence on whatever conservatives declare "identity politics" means conservaties will stop accusing identity politics? What about the last ten presidential cycles suggests we can pursue economic justice without hearing about welfare queens and the dangers of socialism, and what makes you think the white working class is suddenly going to break left?

    And there is a chance. The question is whether the voters you describe are desperate enough to defy themselves. As the Affordable Care Act and its political discourse remind, accusations of socialism still hurt Democrats at the ballot box. When the Republicans raise spectres of Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Vladimir Putin and the KGB, and, oh, hey, Kim Jong Un, where do you think the white working class will go? When the Christianists in the South tie housing guarantees and basic income to communism to the Muslim Brotherhood (conspiracist) to the Obama administration (very conspiracist) and feminism (because the powerful woman near Mr. Obama can only be a Muslim Brotherhood Communist), where do you think the white working class will go?

    And you're not getting rid of the identity politics aimed at women until you give the Christianists everything they want.

    That is one of the things your argument utterly fails to comprehend about history, politics, and behavior. Then again, fake history is a fundamental flaw of your right-wing narrative. You are essentially throwing a supremacist temper tantrum about straw men raised by your own supremacist temper tantrum.

    The big problem presented by these nexes of crisis and opportunity is that the "plan" where Democrats achieve liberal progress stealthily by pandering to irrational and insatiable conservative interests has no real model of success in history. That you "don't see why we can't pass pro-choice, pro-women wage bills too" leaves a gap in history large enough to lose the nation in. Not quite a thousand years wide, but certainly a few centuries.

    It's the conservative narrative you subscribe to that obstructs your vision. Your argument against "identity politics" is conservative; your apparent ignorance of political history fits the conservative pitch; even your expression of a Democratic plan reflects conservative rhetoric denouncing liberal ways.

    You still don't grasp that you are sacrificing a majority of the population. Then again, what are we to expect when you're clearly just making shit up?

    Actually, let us be precise: I think you do know, and I think that discrimination and hatred is what you intend. Whatever your problem with women, you can't erase them, and you can't recover the nation with seething, antisocial immaturity.

    Grow up. Your argument relies on ignorance and vice.

    Logically speaking, you can't claim a majority when you're excluding a majority of a majority. I mean, come on, dude, get your head out, damn it.

    Quit wasting people's time. Either find a point, or get over it. But quit asking people to give you their attention when you have nothing to say.

    No, seriously, it's pretty straightforward: At some point, the poseur should be able to accidentally get something right.

    But you are so determined to attend a right-wing narrative as framework for Democratic and liberal action everyone pretty much sees through you.

    This is not the time for American liberals to set about abandoning or sacrificing each other or anyone else. The question of how to meet certain complaints shot through with neurotic complexity and distress will always present influential questions including basic human dignity.

    Try this way: The bullies want to be stopped ... how? Because this is actually a possibility; it's just really, really complicated, to the point that it shouldn't even be within the range of real potentials except for the fact of how utterly cartoonish one side of our determined American dualism has become.

    Cartoonish? Consider that if we could hop in a time machine and go back to the Reagan Awakening, how do you think an accurate description of the thirty-year prospect would settle with our conservative neighbors? Do you really think the average Republican voter would believe it? Or would they perhaps be insulted by how poorly Republicans and conservatives are depicted? How about the '94 Republican Revolution? Steve Largent was one of my childhood heroes. Then again, consider that his disastrous political career came to an end when a Democrat rolled far enough rightward to win the governorship in Oklahoma ... by pandering to the cockfighting contingent. Which, in turn, is probably the funniest sick joke I've heard in a while, but, you know, as a telltale of the '94 Republican Revolution on through his decade-plus as a lobbyist, Mr. Largent was largely indicative of the problem presented by superstitious wings of conservatism, but is largely reluctant to endorse President Trump, and I do wonder what he would have thought if we showed up at his office one day in '94 or early '95 and explained President Trump being elected by a minority of votes with an apparent assist from the Russian strongman who rises in Yeltsin's wake. And the thought that this is what he was working toward? I'm pretty certain it wouldn't have sat well with him.

    But from citizen activism, like using one's job at a health clinic to sabotage birth control and then claim a conscience clause in defense and excuse from reponsibility, to the presidential candidate who explains that his use of intrauterine contraception is guided by his Christian faith, I mean, come on, really? You think the basic human decency you're so afraid of when bawling about women and feminism can just sit back and stay out of the spotlight with so many suitors coming 'round—and coming again—to spit and throw punches? When someone comes and calls out an idea, why do you want the people who would answer to remain silent?

    Liberals have a joke about 2010: Jobs, jobs, jobs, j'abortion. Republicans raised ruckus about the economy, won the election, generally speaking, and then set about assailing women's health care access. Why should women remain silent? Because it might make↑ who uncomfortable↗?

    You don't have a plan.

    That is to say, surrender is not a plan.

    It's one of the times when the numbers are important: the liberal side of this argument has a majority. Matters of distribution aren't solved by sacrificing a majority of the population to irrational and insatiable idealism pitching a tantrum about its declining influence.

    ―Fin―
     
  14. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    18,523
    How am I sacrificing a majority of the population by getting them free healthcare, better wages, free education and debt relief. You fail to grasp that such policy would benefit the minorities disproportionately to their benefit since the minorities tend to he poorer and have less access to good healthcare and education, it is a matter of selling these policies to the whites as well as minorities, but if you sell the policies to the minorities only then the whites turn around and vote Trump. And despite your yammering about who has a majority tell me who is president right now, who controls congress and the supreme court now, your majority is factually worthless!

    Tax the rich to expand services for all... What is the problem with this? Is it that whites would get free healthcare, free education and better wages too?
     
  15. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    18,523
    First tell me specifically what bill you want for wage equality, there are several laws on the books already, some decades old that make it illegal to pay and employee less based on their sex, so you need to tell me what law you specifically want to fix the earnings gap.

    [quite]
    Wage equality falls under what your conservative sympathies describe as "identity politics". By adopting a right-wing narrative, you have virtually cut yourself off from an economic justice platform. Your hint of a whiff of a shadow of a sketch of a plan is pretty stupid and insulting.[/quite]

    How is it so hard to understand that identity politics is not a winnable platform for elections but still perfectly fine once in office?

    Tax the rich to finance social services like medicare for all, free higher education, increase minimum wage to $15 an hour, how is that not a plan? My real purpose is to win the elections with progressives that make the necessary changes to law to stave off social collapse and revolution, I give zero fucks about identity politics, if we can keep it in to keep you voting fine with me, if we have to not speak of it to win elections, fine with me, there are bigger problems with the way the economy is going at present with the middle class dying and the rich getting ever richer, it is headed towards total social collapse as automation makes the majority of the population obsolete and destitute... and your priority is the wage gap?

    just endless blathering that is not a anti-thesis, but rather at best a very confusing strawman and at worse complete drivel.
     
  16. billvon Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    21,635
    No problem at all! Great idea; it will garner wide support. I guess that's how we won the last election.
     
  17. parmalee peripatetic artisan Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,266
    I understand why people make the time and effort to respond to you in detail, even while doubting your honesty and sincerity, but... Well, I'll just pretend that you are not being intellectually dishonest and offer a suggestion: read Herbert Marcuse's One Dimensional Man. Couldn't find a free audiobook, but here's the full text of the book--it's not that long, and since you've posted countless long and excruciating videos, you could be decent and give it a read.

    One Dimensional Man <<<

    It's relevance might not leap out at you, but if you give it a think... you might reconsider your tactics.
     
  18. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,884

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!


    Click to be in luck.

    Do you ever actually have anything to say?

    No, really:

    By leaving a majority of Americans out.

    And what does history say about that? How did these voters vote on the drug war? How about wage equality?

    What makes you think that, having won election, an anti-abortion Democrat is going to secure a woman's health care access?

    What makes you think that a pro-police Democrat is going to vote for people's civil rights?

    What does history tell you about the Blue Dogs?

    First you elect the politicians you want, then they vote for the laws you want? No, seriously, naïveté doesen't even begin to describe your pretense of ignorance.

    You are so subjugated by your own identity politics that you're not thinking anything through. Nancy Pelosi, for instance, can make the point about anti-abortion Democrats, but we might also notice she said nothing about when Democrats will be passing their bills.

    As to the bills we shouldn't talk about, and then just pass, according to your wannabe "plan", why do you think the Hyde Amendment still stands? Democrats have had opportunities to settle that question over the last forty-one years, and they haven't because they can't whip the votes from their conservative faction. A lot of recent American political history looks like this. How are you winning a sixty-seat majority without conservative Democrats? What makes you think they will pass your bills? How are you picking up House seats in districts where they will vote against themselves in order to make a point about gay marriage? You would say↑ "fight it in the courts", and that's all well and fine, but let us reconsider the point about House districts where they will, say, vote for the anti-ACA candidate in order to make a point about homosexuals. (Something about two plus two goes here.)

    See, the whole time, you're still alienating this bloc you want Democrats to undertake extraordinary efforts to court. And apparently to swindle? Because, you know, getting some of them elected means they're going to vote for the platform that makes them uncomfortable in the first place, which is why Appeasement is even an idea in the first place? Yeah, they'll just give over; why wouldn't they, right?

    You're running around in circles for a reason: You don't actually have a plan because you don't understand the phenomena you're dealing with. The actual occasional emergence of the supremacist left generally does not, and particularly would not at this time, surprise anyone who pays attention to history. In the hands of an unskilled, two-bit conservative provocateur, it is even less convincing an argument than usual.

    Do try to make sense, please.

    See #109↑:

    • When you finally get around to the part where "they will then vote on bills for wage equality", one of the first bills up is to erase discrimination from salary history. Your economic justice platform just ran into identity politics asserting a socialist takeover of the private sector by capping worker earning potential. And remember, even if the bill doesn't actually do that, you still must answer the argument, because historically the subgroup of the population you wish to court traditionally breaks conservative. That is to say, when Marsha Blackburn argues that women are insulted by wage equality under law, and some other Republican complains that women are hurting men by disrupting salary history, how are you going to hang onto those "straight cis white men"↗ who are "hurting" when they decide the job and raise you're getting them just isn't enough because of those nasty women wrecking up salary history and capping worker earning potential?

    See also #8↑.

    How hard is it to observe history?

    (1) You don't get progress out of conservative nominal Democrats; you get generally competent stewardship of government, and occasional votes to hold the line when it's really, really important.

    (2) Trying to swindle "straight cis white men", as you so fret about, must happen lightning-quick, or else it won't happen, and then it backfires.

    (3) See #109↑:

    And in the great tradition of "both sides" equivocation, I just don't see how betraying that bloc of voters you're so worried about is going to work. More directly: Compared to history, how do you expect it to go when we try to sway these "straight cis white men" you're so worried about by excluding others from our pitch to equality and justice, Republicans respond with panicked rhetoric about identity politics, and the first thing we do is settle wage equality?

    You think that bill is getting through?

    Insensate and conservative is no good way to stumble through life. Look at your prescription. Not only is it so vague as to be meaningless, you're aiming for Democrats to exploit the victim bloc you're advocating by pandering to them and then explicitly betraying that pandering. You're so caught up in your right-wing narrative you can't even begin to account for the operating reality that will face your anemic joke of a hint of a whiff of a shadow of a sketch of a plan.

    It's almost like you want Democrats to set up the complaint that "both sides" do it.

    Maybe it would help if you started paying attention.

    Or is the fact that you're not paying attention—and, thus, simply wasting everyone's time with vapid, worthless excrement—part of the point?

    What is this "plan" intended to accomplish? See, here's part of your problem:

    See, you're just not smart enough to figure out it's not a dualism. There is a difference between making something a priority and simply keeping priorities. More simply, what priority is any given notion when the point is simply to not abandon it?

    In order to win this bloc of voters you so badly want, the prescription is to lay off what conservatives describe as identity politics. You clearly have not thought through the implications. The idea that you can get your agenda through before a midterm? Where are you getting that sixty-seat Senate majority?

    Like I said, your hint of a whiff of a shadow of a sketch of a plan is not particularly original or innovative.

    What you need to do is go back and tear up your right-wing narrative↗, and attend the actual historical record.

    The first big problem with your approach is your attack against women and minorities; liberals have long been aware that we create bully conservatives by not giving over to supremacism. That part never was news.

    Your ignorance of liberal political argument is the second major problem; liberals have long been aware that one of the challenges of reaching across the gap is that some people refuse that contact. You're nothing new in that context, either.

    And your apparent ignorance of history is a recurring theme in your utter failure to say anything useful along the way. Liberals have long been sick and tired of this particular conservative behavior, but also long aware that basic decency is too much to ask of the supremacist right. Your narrative is not particularly surprising, though I admit sometimes it occurs to wonder why provocateurs of your manner even bother.
     
  19. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    18,523
    It did garner wide support, just not amongst enough primary democrat voters, who instead choose the "It is her time" policy and lost the general election to a pig boar as a result.

    Oh and by all means read Alvin Toffler "The 3rd wave" (read "Future Shock" and "Power Shift" as well" and come to understand the economic and social cliff we are approaching.
    How am I leaving a majority of americans out, do not minorities need healthcare, education, better jobs, debt releif?

    Drugs will be legalized eventually, not even the all republican goverment can stop it now, as for wage equality, again pay discriminating by sex has been illegal for decades, multiple laws signed into law by democrats and republicans alike. Why not help women by giving them free healthcare, free education, higher wages and debt relief, with everyone else?

    Because the republicans most certainly won't. I voted for Hillary knowing full well she was not interested in the economic improvement this country needs, but she would still be better at it than Trump. Likewise a pro-life democrat will still be more conforming to woman's health than a republican.

    Because the republicans most certainly won't. I voted for Hillary knowing full well she was not interested in the police reform this country needs, but she would still be better at it than Trump. Likewise a pro-police democrat will still be more conforming to civilian rights than a republican.

    That they still managed to get obamacare passed, repealed don't ask don't tell, Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform, it was not much but it was more then any republican congress would do. More so the blue dogs are gone, I'm talking about a Berniecrat - justice democrat take over to finally move the democratic party further left on ECONOMIC issues, not just social ones were we have been the party of republican-lite. Such Progressives will still be for the social issues are you, they just will campaign on winnable agendas like like medicare for all, $15 minium wage, etc.

    Well I'm glad you recognize I have had a plan.



    By running an anti-gay marriage democrat in that district. If there is going to be a democrat purity test it has to be on the most electable issues: tax the rich to finance more social services, oh and political corruption and no more corporate donors. For example the increase in free medical care, reduction in insurance burden, increase wages, etc, will do more for women then repeal of the Hyde Amendment.

    How is giving them free healthcare, free education, higher wages, debt releif, swindling them?

    Because they are tired of no economic improvement despite one goverment after another, both democrat and republican, shafting them that they are willing to vote in a pig boar over yet another establishment candidate that gives them committee tested platitudes and courts minorities and ignores them for being white. Your obsessed with not appeasing these people, who through no fault of their own where born with a skin color you find represent privilege and evil, and yet they are poor, destitute and spiteful at a system that at best lies to them and at worse ignores them, and so what does not appeasing these people do, eh? who is president now?

    No you do not understand the wider economic situation we are in, 45% of jobs will be automated out of existence in the next few decades, all that money going to the rich, leaving hundred of millions destitute, they will radicalize, trump is just the beginning, supremacy is just a symptom of the problem as they try to scapegoat their problems on to others, and your solution is to fight a symptom while the disease spreads. We must deal with the economy first, we must tax the rich to stabilize the poor and middle class, stabilized they won't revolt and lynch you when some christian fundamentalist new order takes over.

    How am I abandoning the priority, I'm just not making the gays, women, blacks, the primary issue, we are not going to become pro-life and rescind gay marriage and enslave the blacks again. I'm merely saying we can't win majority control of the goverment on those priorities alone, we must have an economy first agenda of tax the rich for social services for all, we will gain democrat seats in presently republican controlled districts on that, those democrats may still be socially conservative, but not as much as the republicans they replace, and with a richer, better educated, less stressed, more stable populace that the economy first agenda produces, they will also be more progressive and vote for socially liberal ideals, the ones you care about.
     
  20. parmalee peripatetic artisan Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,266
    I'm just not getting this. Obviously, there are plenty of people who simply aren't smart enough to get that, but they're not posting text on the internets. Or even embedded videos, for that matter. But then real-life examples abound.

    My dogs don't like early AMM, and I figured it was Cornelius Cardew they were objecting to--but then, they don't seem to mind his People's Liberation Music stuff, whereas I can only listen to that for perspective. At some point in the early 70's, Cardew not only abandoned his avant garde past (AMM, Scratch Orchestra, et al)--he totally renounced it. Instead, he adopted an overly authoritarian form of Maoism and started composing "populist" music for the "workers," which still ended up sounding kind of weird, just not in an especially good way. Then he may or may not have gotten himself killed by MI5 in a mysterious hit and run "accident." But the only people listening to later Cardew today are the same people who listen to early Cardew.

    Not that EF parallels Cardew all that much, apart from the not "getting" what he ostensibly espouses (AMM were/are steeped in Adorno in every respect), it's more that I don't get EF kind of in the same way I don't get Cardew. EF is smart enough (I think), but he's driven by something hostile to the cause.
     
  21. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,884

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    Click because ... er ... ah ... Patricia!

    You've already been told↑, but the best you could manage↑

    —was cheap identity politics.

    See, you're not even trying.

    You know, with an issue on the table, you can't blithely pretend there isn't.

    I want women to have the same opportunities as anyone else. You denounce equality as "identity politics". You've already been answered as to the problem with that appeal to excrement. You've already choked up and chickened out in favor of blithering-penis identity politics.

    If that was true we wouldn't be having this discussion because the issue would already be resolved.

    If that was true we wouldn't be having this discussion because the issue would already be resolved.

    They're also the reason Obama took single-payer off the table so early; they stymied a vote with the effect of allowing Republicans to reorganize and redefine the argument, and Democrats have been paying the price for that ever since, and they have certainly never been helpful with, say, the Hyde Amendment.

    And what they got, in return for their efforts, was replaced by Republicans.

    To reiterate: You don't have a plan.

    Start making sense.

    One of these days, you should try writing a liberal political argument, not a conservative wish-list derived from a conservative narrative.

    Well, you said it, yourself:

    Part of your problem is that you can't keep track of all the horsepucky you're spinning. You actually wrote a paragraph about tricking these voters and fulfilling a liberal agenda before the pendulum swings back.

    You do realize that has nothing to do with what you pretended a response to.

    Seriously, dude, grow up. Basically what you're telling us is that you're terrified of conservatives, especially "straight cis white men"↗, because they will destroy civilized society before permitting justice? Honestly, um, yeah. See, when liberals say it by making jokes about how, "We gotta get out of this place, 'cause it's the last thing we'll fail to do", it's misogyny and identity politics. But when you want Democrats to roll on women and minorities because conservatives, especially those "straight cis white men" will tear the place up if they can't be just a little bit more equal than everyone else, it's ... what? Something we're supposed to take seriously?

    You're making the point, more and more, though, that this might well be about how pissed off conservatives are about having stopped liberal initiatives. For instance, to the one, yes, it sucks that we haven't even caught up to the Luddites, yet. To the other, though, it's also true that a group who has, historically, done their damnedest to make sure we don't catch up probably shouldn't complain too sharply.

    Here is what you show yourself incapable of understanding: It doesn't really matter, historically, how much "they've done it to themselves". No, really. Those working-class straight white cisgendered men you're so focused on, they wrecked their unions, they prescribed tough-on-crime instead of addiction treatment. Nobody told them they couldn't have jobs; growing resentment of an apparent glass escalator depends in part on the fact that many men have refused to pursue these jobs. When it comes to solutions, though, the only time that matters is if it must. If they start blithering about their penises, of course others are going to wonder, or, you know, worse yet, have something to say.

    Well, that's where you run into the problem with the right-wing narrative.

    You've apparently missed the point.

    Not that anyone is surprised.

    No, you've also vilified the human rights of women, denigrated equal rights in general, and explicitly advocated unequal treatment.

    What, other than your unreliable say-so supports your would-be thesis?

    Here, I'll give you a hint: "economy first agenda of tax the rich for social services for all".

    "Economy first" is not a terrible slogan, just extraordinarily uncreative. But "tax the rich for social services for all" is pretty much a conservative description.

    See, that's how we know you have nothing to say. You manage to carefully or else extraordinarily accidentally miss the point at all times, and hew to a Republican narrative in constructing your pitch.
     
  22. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    18,523
    I'm driven by the fact that we lost, that Trump is president, how did we get here, how could we have prevented this, how do we win. There are several factor, none of which mutually exclusive and like a combination of all:

    1. Hillary Clinton: horrible fucking candidate should have never run. I said this though with far less venom in 2008, we choose Obama instead, we got 8 years decent presidency out of it, in 2016 not enough people listened, now we got trump.
    2. SJW: The regressive left has powered the alt-right to victory, a policy of identity politics Über alles cost us the white working class to trump, the blue wall fell.
    3. Neo-Liberals: Economic moderates during the Obama years meant very little was done about the economy, the middle class continues to decay, growing ever more livid, ever more radicalized that they were willing to vote trump just to fuck over the establishment that fucked over them.

    I did not read the rest, I got to go grocery shopping now. Anyways are you saying "tax the rich for social service for all" is what conservatives want? Or are you saying that is the position conservatives want us to say, because Bernie is now the most like politician in America and that is his principle demand, though yes he says it better: "economy first agenda of tax the rich for social services for all" is not a slogan meant for the masses it is me trying to simplify these things for you.

    Now I have been repeating my point over and over again, as succinctly as possible (tax the rich for social service for all) and yet you disagree and say I'm not getting your point, ok then, please give me your point that I'm missing, in one sentence, SELL IT TO ME.
     
  23. billvon Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    21,635
    Simple. Next time avoid making this your message:
     

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